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Oexxts. 



^ll■VI!^l«.7^UBU(iA'HoH bf THt liL!.!' dUftREW &staWdKrd 


Vol. 8. No 444 Oct. 11 , 1884. Annual Subscription, |30.00. 

AN 

ISHMAELITE 

BY 



MISS M. E. BRADDON 

Author of “ LADY AUDLEY’S SECRET, 
“ PHANTOM FORTUNE,” Etc. 


Entered at ilie Post Office, N. Y.. as second-class matter. 
Copyright, 18-4, by .)ohn \V. Lovkll Co, 


>> 


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CLOTH BINDING for this volume can be obtained from any bookseller or newsdealer, price IScts, 



LOVELL’S LIBRARY-CATALOGUE. 


it. Hyperion 20 

3. Outre-Mer 20 

3. The Happy Boy 10 

4. Arne 10 

3. F rankenstein 10 

6. TheLast of theMohicans.20 

7. Clytie 20 

8. The Moonstone, Part I.xo 
9 The Moonstone, Part II. 10 

to. Oliver Twist 20 

11. The Coming Race 10 

12. Leila 10 

13. The Three Spaniards... 20 

14. The Tricks of the Greeks.20 

15. L’Abb^ Constantin 20 

*6. Freckles 20 

17. The Dark Colleen 20 

18. They were Married ....10 

tg. Seekers After God 20 

20. The Spanish Nun 10 

21. Green Mountain Boys.. 20 

22. Fleurette 20 

23. Second Thoughts 

24. The New Magdalen .... 20 

25. Divorce 20 

26. Life of Washington 20 

27. Social Etiquette 15 

28. Single Heart, Double 

' Face 10 

29. ' Irene ; or, The Lonely 

Manor 20 

30. Vice Versa 20 

^1. Ernest Maltravers 20 

32. The Haunted House... 10 

33. John Halifax 20 

34. 800 Leagues on the 

t Amazon 10 

35. The Cryptogram 10 

36. Life of Marion .....20 

37. Paul and Virginia to 

38. A Tale of Two Cities .... 20 

39. The Hermits 20 

40. An Adventure in Thule, 

etc 

41. A Marriage in High Lifeao 

42. Robin 20 

43. Two on a Tower 20 

44. Rasselas 

45. Alice ; a sequel to Er- 

nest Maltravers 20 

46. Duke of Kandos 20 

47. Baron Munchausen 

48. A Princess of Thule.... 20 

49. The Secret Despatch.. . .20 

50. Early Days of Christian- 
ity, 2 Parts, each 20 

51. Vicar of Wakefield 10 

52. Pr»gress and Poverty... 20 

53. The Spy 20 

54. East Lynne 20 

55. A Strange Story 20 

56. Adam Bede, Part 1 15 

Adam Bede, Part II.... 15 

57. The Golden Shaft 20 

58. Portia 

.59. Last Days of Pompeii. ..20 
'60. The Two Duchesses. . . izo 

61. TomBrown’sSchoolDays.2o 

62. Wooing O’t, 2 Pts. each. 1 5 

63. The Vendetta 20 

Hypatia, P.art 1 15 

liypatia. Part II... ...15 


65. Selma 15 

66. Marcaret and her Brides- 
maids .. . .20 

67. Horse Shoe Robinson, 

2 Parts, each ..15 

68. Gulliver’s Travels 20 

69. Amos Barton 10 

70. The Berber 20 

71. Silas Mamer 10 

72. Queen of the County . . .20 

73. Life of Cromwell 15 

74. Jane Eyre 20 

75. Child’sHist’ry of Engl’d. 20 

76. Molly Bawn 20 

77. Pillone 15 

78. Phyllis 20 

79. Romola, Part 1 15 

Romola^ Part II 15 

80. Science in ShortChapters. 20 

81. Zanom 20 

82. A Daughter of Heth 20 

83. Right and Wrong Uses of 

r the Bible 20 

84. Night and Morning, Pt. 1 . 15 
NightandMorningjPt.II 15 

85. Shandon Bells 20 

86. Monica 10 

87. Heart and Science 20 

88. The Golden Calf 20 

89. The Dean’s Daughter.. .20 

90. Mrs. Geoffrey 20 

91. Pickwick Papers, Part 1 . 20 

Pickwick Papers,Part 1 1 . 20 

92. Airy, Fairy Lilian 20 

93. Macleod of Dare 20 

94. Tempest Tossed, Part 1 . 20 
Tempest Tossed, P’t 1 1 . 20 

95. Letters from High Lat- 

^ itudeso 20 

96. Gideon Fleyce 20 

97. India and Ceylon 20 

98. The Gypsy Queen 20 

99. The Admiral’s Ward. ... 20 

100. Nimport, 2 Parts, each.. 15 

101. Harry Holbrooke. 20 

102. Tritons, 2 Parts, each .. 1 5 

103. LetNothIng You Dismay. 10 

104. Lady Audley’s Secret.. .20 

105. Woman’s Place To-day. 20 

106. Dunallan, 2 parts, each. 15 

107. Housekeeping and Home 

making 15 

108. No New Thing 20 

109. TheSpoopendykePapers.2o 

no. False Hopes 13 

nr. Labor and Capital 20 

112. Wanda, 2 parts, each ... 15 

113. More Words about Bible. 20 

114. Monsieur Lecocq, P’t. 1.20 
Monsieur Lecocq, Pt.II.20 

115. An Outline of Irish Hist. 10 

116. The Lerouge Case 20 

117. Paul Clifford I ... .20 

118. A New Lease of Life.. .20 

119. Bourbon Lilies 20 

120. Other People’s Money.. 20 

12 r. Lady of Lyons 

122. Ameline de Bourg 15 

123. A Sea Queen .....20 

124. The Ladies Lindores. ..20 

125. Haunted Hearts 10 

x 26> Loyst Lord Beresford...20 


127. Under Two Flags, Pt I. 20 
Under Two Flags, Pt II.20 

128. Money 

r29. In PerD of His Life 20 

r3o. India; What can it teach 

us? 20 

r3r. Jets and Flashes 20 

132. Moonshine and Margue- 
rites 

r33, Mr. Scarborou^gh* s 
Family, 2 Part^ each . . 13 
134. Arden..; 13 

133. Tower of Percemont.. ..20 

136. Yolande 20 

r37. Cruel London ."'.....20 

r38. The Gilded Clique 20 

139. Pike County Folks 20 

140. Cricket on the Hearth.. 10 

141. Henry Esmond 20 

142. Strange Adventures of a 

Phaeton .20 

r43. Denis Duval ro 

r44. 01 dCuriosityShop,P’t 1 . 13 
01 dCuriosityShop,P’rt 1 1 . 1 3 

143. Ivanhoe, Part 1 13 

Ivanhoe, Part II 13 

r46. White Wings 20 

147. The Sketch Book 20 

148. Catherine ro 

149. Janet’s Repentance ro 

150. Bamaby Rudge, Part L. r3 
Barnaby Rudge, Part II,r3 

131. Felix Holt 20 

r32. Richelieu ..ro 

133. Sunrise, Part I rs 

r33. Sunrise, Part II ...rs 

r54. Tour of the World in 80 

«»• Days 

r55. Mystery of Orcival 20 

r36. Lovel, the Widower. ... ro 
r37. Romantic Adventures of 

a Milkmaid 10 

r38. DayidCopperfield, Part 1.20 
DavidCopperfield,P’rt 1 1. 20 

rS9. Charlotte Temple ro 

r6o. Rienzi, 2 Parts, each . . . rs 
r6r. Promise of Marriage. ... ro 

r62. Faith and Unfaith 20 

r63. The Happy Man rc 

r64. Barry Lyndon 20 

163. Eyre’s Acquittal ro 

r66. 20,000 Leagues Under the 

.'^ea 

167. Anti-Slavery Days 20 

r68. Beauty’s Daughters 20 

r6c,. Beyond the Sunrise 20 

rro. Hard Times 20 

171. Toni Cringle’s Log .... 20 

r72. Vanity Fair 30 

r73. Underground Russia. . . .20 
174. Middlemarch,2 Pts.each.20' 

r75. Sir Tom 20 

176. Pelham 20' 

r77. The Story of Ida ro^ 

178. Madcap Violet 20! 

179. The Little Pilgrim 10 

r8o. Kilmeny 2 

181. Whist, or Bumblepuppy? 
r82. That Beautiful Wretch. 

r83 Her Mother’s Sin 20^ 

r84. Green Pastures, etc 2(f 

185. Mysterious Island, Pt l.tc 




AN I8HMAELITE 

/ 


I/-3 






^ g^oiiel 


MISS MiE?%E 

y 


ADDON 






DEC 





. ■ jr ! f - , 

‘MK':' 

' ■ 

,'V 


y "yy'-. 




NEW YORK 

JOHN W. LOVELL COMPANY 
14 AND 16 Vesey Stueet 







AN ISHMAELITE. 


CHAPTEE I. 

“the harvest is past, the SmiMEE IS ENDED.” 

Pen-Hoel, tlie old cliateau of Pen-Hoel, reared its steep roof and 
^ conical turrets in the midst of a land of orchards, and hillsides and 
i marshy, fertile meadows populous "with cattle and narrow lanes, with 
I here and there a cluster of old stone cottages and a dingy old inn, 
i which called itself a village. The cottages were substantial and 
roomy, the barns and rickyards liad a wealthy air. Here there was 
a flock of turkeys in the field, there a procession of gray-brother 
geese marching along the lane. Yonder, across the soft meadows, 
the shallow winding streamlets, shadow'ed by the gray foliage of 
many a willow — ^a broad stretch of wet sand glistened in the light, 
and far away, beyond the level sands, glimmered the gray of a dis- 
tant sea. 

This w’as Brittany ; and the house of Pen-Hoel was one of the old- 
, est chateaux- in the province, and the man w’ho owned it counted 
himself one of the best in the land. He was the descendant of a 
good old Breton family, a race that had never been rich, and which 
liad been going down financially for the last hundred years. But 
Raymond Caradec, of Pen-Hoel, did not value himself by the length 
; of his purse. The traditions of his family were to him as gold and 
: silver are to other men. He never forgot to assert his superiority to 
the common herd. It seemed to him that all the honors and digni- 
; ties of his race, from the days of St. Louis, had been lying by and 
accumulating at compound interest to swell his dignity. 

Hard for such a man as this to taste the flavor of dishonor. And 
: yet such a cup, bitter as gall, had been given to him to drink, in 
, days gone by, when the tall stalwart lad yonder, dark-haired, dark- 
' browed, sullen, was a little child. The boy looked a somewhat difii- 
; cult subject to-day, as he lounged in a moody attitude against the 
, gray old stone parapet, clothed with ferns, colored with lichens, rich 
^ with the slow growdh of ages. He leant with folded arms resting, 
upon the stone, and his handsome dark eyes looking far aw’ay to that - 
silvery light upon the sea, beyond the barren waste of wet Vu’ow’ii 
! sands. Far away on his right the fortress of Mont St. Michel 
frowned against iilie sky, a conical mass of granite rock and granite 


4 


AN JSHMAELITE. 


towers, looking like an Egyptian pyramid in tlie distance. Along 
the green valley wound the shallow, sluggish Couesiion, the stream 
which divides Normandy from Brittany, and on an inland summit 
the white houses of Avranches flashed in the sunlight, reminding 
the lad yonder of a city that is set on a hill, and cannot be hid. 

The chateau of Pen-Hoel stood upon a picturesque height, a green 
cliff which rose abruptly from the fertile level below, and thus com- 
manded a wide view over the pastoral country, and away to the 
rocks and the sea, Tombelaine, Mont St. Michel, Cancale. That 
broad gravel terrace on the height was a delightful walk for a Sep- 
temljer afternoon such as this, the air clear and mild, the sky a soft, 
mournful gray, touched witli sunlight toward the west, an odor of 
dead leaves and burning turf from the village in the green valley 
below. 

Between this broad terrace and the chateau there was a garden, a 
garden rich in such flowers as flourish abundantly in that genial 
climate. The nine long windows and glass door of the ground 
floor, the ten windows of the upper story, looked upon this garden 
from the gray stone front of the chateau. At each end of the build- 
ing there was a Norman tower, with a conical roof, and in the mid- 
dle of the facade over the glass doorway there was a cupola sur- 
mounted by a gilded vane. Under«the cupola hung the big bell of 
Pen-Hoel — a bell that had sounded many a call to arms in days gone 
by, but which now rang only for breakfast and dinner. 

In days gone by, days of adventure, danger, honor, fame. But 
the days upon which Eaymond Caradec brooded with sad and bit- 
ter memory this afternoon, as he jDaced slowly up and down the ter- 
race, were days of trouble and vexation, pain, grief, shame, dis- 
honor ; days which he would fain have forgotten, which he might 
have forgotten perhaps, had not the presence of this overgrown, 
idle, sullen youth of eighteen forever reminded him of that miser- 
able period of his life. 

M. Caradec had been married twice. His second wife was in the 
salon yonder, a pretty, fragile-looking young woman, sitting at an 
open window reading a novel, and looking up every now and then 
to talk to her two children, who were playing together one minute, 
squabbling or fighting the next, now rushing out upon the terrace, 
now running back into the salon. 

His second wife was pretty, fair-haired, delicate, somewhat insig- 
nificant in face and figure. His first wife was superbly handsome 
— a Judith, a Cleopatra, a queen among women ; tall, molded like a 
statue, every line and curve perfection ; eyes of darkest lustre, laven 
hair, classic profile, peerless complexion. She had all these charms 
of face and figure, but she was unfortunately the possessor of a dia- 
bolical temper, and after leading her husband a life of unspeakable 
torment for three years, she ran away from him with his treacherous 
friend and her lover, just as Caradec of Pen-Hoel began to flatter 
himself that he had got the mastery of that passionate nature, that 
he had schooled the wildling to endure restraint and domesticitv. 
Guilt soon learns to lie. Coralie d’Estrange was all candor and in- 
nocence when she was given to M. Caradec, a girl fresh from the 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


5 


galling restraints of an inclosed convent, glad to marry anybody who 
would give her liberty of speech and action, fine clothes and a" little 
gayety ; but, educated by her seducer, the frank and too outspoken 
girl became the sullen, crafty woman, cunning enough to hoodwink 
even the keen-eyed Raymond Caradec. 

Thus it was that although there had been much bitterness between 
husband and wife, and although Raymond knew that his wife hated 
him, her flight with his false friend was a thunderclap. He had be- 
lieved *in his friend’s honor in the abstract, and the seducer had 
played so deep a game, had so steeped himself in hypocrisy, and 
had so colored his every word and every act with falsehood, that he 
had appeared to the husband as that one man whom his wife most 
detested. There had not been a flaw in the acting of their comedy. 
And one fine morning they vanished, slipped quietly away in the 
broad noon, carrying the three year old boy \rith them. Before 
Raymond knew- that this triple disappearance, wdiich might mean an 
accident by land or sea, really meant an elopement, Lucieu Roche- 
fort and his mistress had sailed for the Isle of Bourbon, where the 
traitor had an estate. 

At this distance the lovers may possibly have considered them- 
selves beyond the reach of Raymond Caradec’s vengeance. If so, 
they poorly understood the master of Pen-Hoel. He followed them 
to their voluptuous retreat in the Indian Ocean, their fairy palace in 
a land of volcanoes, a white w’alled villa, with its back against the 
mountains and its feet in the sea. He followed them there as he 
W’'Ould have followed them to the furthest confines of the earth. 
Within an hour of landing he challenged his false friend, met him 
next morning at sunrise, and ran him through the heart in a roman- 
tic dell on the shore of that tropical ocean. He left the island by 
the next steamer, with the traitor’s blood hardly dry upon his sword, 
and he left his wife and son without ever having seen the face of 
either or made a single inquiiy as to their circumstances. 

It was only when the island was a vanishing speck upon the hori- 
zon line — a spot of darkness on the blue of the ocean, which might 
be earth or cloud — that Raymond Caradec remembered the existence 
of the child, and that in so leaving the island he w^as leaving the boy 
in his mother’s keeping, and leaving him to all the chances of evil 
naturally involved in such companionship. But even this consider- 
ation did not soften him. 

“She chose to steal him from me,” he said to himself with a 
scornful shrug of his shoulders. “ Let her keep the viper she 
hatched. What should I have to do with him ? ” 

He included the unoffending child in his savage hatred of the 
woman who had deceived him. She was pure and innocent when 
she bore him that only child ; but there had been no love between 
them even in those early days, and he had never loved the boy. Six 
months after the child’s birth Rochefort returned from the Isle of 
Bourbon, where he had been summoned to his father’s death-bed 
soon after leaving college, and where he had lived for some years. 
He appeared unexpectedly one day at Pen-Poel, was welcomed by 
its master ; and in the companionship of his college friend Raymond 


6 


AN TSIUTAELITE. 


found a resource against the gloom and dreariness of a loveless 
home. He talked of his -wife’s faults freely to his friend, made him 
arbiter in their disputes, and he was secure in the belief that the 
two hated each other. And now love and friendship had both ^u’oved 
false, and the man who had been to him as a brother w^as lying in 
his early grave on yonder tropical shore, and the woman who had 
been his wufe w^as an outcast. 

What was the after-life of the woman and the child so forsaken 
by their natural protector, so given over to evil destiny — a ivey for 
the gods ? Yonder dark-browned boy, Sebastian, could tell what that 
life w^as like, if he cared to unlock those firm lips of his, to tell the 
story of unmerited sorrow, unmerited shame. 

Mme. Caradec did not remain long in the Isle of Bourbon after 
her lover’s death. Sebastian had only the faintest, dimmest mem- 
ories of that volcanic island — a vision of lofty mountain-peaks, snow'- 
clad, and dazzling ; a fertile shore, fruits, flowers, such as he never 
saw in his older years ; a blue, bright sea, and curious black faces, 
friendly and smiling, with flashing teeth and strange rolling eyes. 
It w^as all as a dream. Such things had been a part of his life, and 
he a part of them, enjoying the sea and the flow^ers and the hot blue 
sky with a kind of half conscious sensuous existence, like the life of 
any other young animal rolling upon the sunlit sands. 

Then came a long experience of a shij) — storms and fine weather, 
rain and sunshine. He remembered that part of his life vi-sddly. 
The sailors, and how good they w'ere to him ; and how he loved a 
certain three — two blacks and a white — who were his special friends 
and protectors. 

His mother? Well, he hardly knew of her as his mother in those 
days — had never been taught to call her by that name. He knew 
that there w^as a handsome lady on board, wdio w^ore fine gowns and 
sparkling rings, and who lolled all day in a low” chair on deck, un- 
der an umbrella, fanning herself and talking to a gentleman wdio 
w”as alw”ays smoking. The lady spoke to Sebastian sometimes, the 
gentleman never. The lady’s French maid looked after Sebastian ; 
dressed and undressed him, put him to bed in a berth on the top of 
her own — a funny little berth, with a round scuttle port staring in at 
it like a giant’s eye, an eye that watched him sleeping or waking, 
and of wliich he felt sometimes a strange, indescribable fear, as if it 
were alive and a thing of evil. 

The ship was a steamer. A horrible monster in a black and fiery 
pit — a monster with gigantic arms and legs of shining steel, a living 
thing that throbbed and plunged by day and night— drove the great 
ship through the water, and very nearly drove Sebastian out of his 
mind when he tried to understand W”hat the great fiery thing w”as 
and what it did. Even in those days he had a passional.e yearning 
for all kinds of know”ledge, to understand the meaning of all things 
— wliy the stars shone, and wdiat they were ; why the waves rolled 
and rose in this w”ay or that, and the nature of' that strange w”hite 
light that gleamed and flashed upon the ever moving waters ; where 
the world ended and where dead people w”ent. 

He questioned the sailors upon all these subjects ; and his favorite 


AN I8HMAELITE. 


7 


blackie, who had a vivid imagination, answered him very fully out 
of his own African inner consciousness, enriched by the supersti- 
tions and traditions of his race ; so that, when he landed at Havre 
at four years old, Sebastian Caradec was steex)ed in Malagasy folk- 
lore, and he knew very little else. 

His next memories were of a house among trees and flowers — not 
such trees or such flowers as he had known yonder, by the Indian 
Ocean. Everything here was on a smaller scale and of a less lavish 
loveliness. The house was small, but it was full of prettiness and 
bright color. The garden was only a lawn, with a bank of flowers 
and a belt of foliage suiTounding it, and a fountain in a marble 
basin in the middle of the grass ; it was so small that Sebastian had 
exj)lored its innermost recesses in ten minutes, and had to begin 
again and go on beginning again all day long, since his sole amuse- 
ment was to be found in this garden ; save on those rare occasions 
when Lisette the maid took him for a long w'alk in the big wonder- 
ful city a little way off — a city of streets that had no end of houses 
that seemed to reach to the skies — hors'es, carriages, fountains, end- 
less shops, numberless people, a perpetual trampling to and fro, and 
the sound of trumx)ets and drums, a bright vision of helmets and 
prancing steeds, or a little troop of foot soldiers marching by, with 
a giant in front, swinging a gilded staff, and strange-looking men in 
white leather aprons, marching two and two. Then came the splen- 
dor of carriages flashing past, carriages drawn by four horses. The 
Citizen King was ruler in that old-fashioned Paris, and Prince Louis 
Naj^oleon was still beating the pavements of West-end London, and 
hatching the policy of the future — dreaming of a new Paris, in 
which he should be master, a Paris all beauty and luxury, vivid, 
glorious as the crystalline city of the ApocalyjDse. W'ho shall say 
how glorious were the dreams behind that inscrutable brow which 
had faced failure and defeat, a father’s stigma, the world’s con- 
temx:>t, prison and exile, and which still X3ressed steadily forward to 
the goal ? 

The handsome lady who had been on board the ship sat among 
the flowers in the veranda, and fanned herself, and talked to the 
gentleman who smoked. Just as she had done on the deck of the 
steamer. He was a stoutish man, very dark, with blue-black hair, 
and black almond-shax^ed eyes, and Sebastian hated him, without 
knowing why. The man was never absolutely unkind to the boy. 
He only ignored him. The woman was sometimes kind, sometimes 
cruel. She would play with the child, and caress him passionately 
in the morning, and fling hin) from her in the evening, in a bui’st of 
anger, for which he had given her no cause. 

Lisette said madame was a good soul, but was not always herself. 
Sebastian wondered what it was to be not one’s self, and why this 
mother of his changed so curiously — soft and fair, and gentle and 
caressing in the morning ; red and angry, with eyes that flashed fire, 
at night. 

She went out very often in her carriage with the dark gentleman ; 
after midday it was more usual for her to be out of doors than at 
home. She went to races, to drive in the Bois, to dine at a fashion- 


8 


AN imiMAELJTE. 


able restaurant, and almost every evening to the opera or theatre. 
Her toilet was a solemn business, which occupied her and Lisette for 
an hour and a half at a stretch, and then she came down-stairs rust- 
ling in silk or satin, with an Indian shawl upon her splendid shoul- 
ders, a plume of feathei's in her bonnet. Everything about her w’as 
rich and beautiful. The sheen of satin, the glow of color caught 
the child’s eye and fascinated him. 

‘‘Mamma, how pretty you are,” he cried one day; and then she 
caught him up in her arms and kissed him and called him her little 
angel, and took him out to look at her horses, the beautiful golden 
bays, nodding their thoroughbred heads in glittering brass harness, 
champing their bits. 

Sebastian had often patted the horses and admired the carriage, 
but he had never ridden in it — had never sat by his mother’s side 
upon those brocaded cushions. 

One day he asked her to take him with her, pleaded to her pite- 
ously, as little children plead for trifles — as if this one thing were a 
matter of life or death. 

The dark man was standing by and she turned to him with an en- 
treating look— looked at him as a slave looks at her master. 

“May not I take him ? ” she asked. “ Why shouldn’t I? ” 

“Why shouldn’t yon? Because I did not buy that carriage for 
another man’s brat to sit in. Take that little howler indoors, Jean ” 
(to the servant), “and strangle him if he doesn’t hold his tongue. 
You ought to have left him in Bourbon with his darkeys, as I ad- 
vised you. He would have done very well there, and he is in every- 
body’s way here.” 

In everybody’s way. That was a hard saying, and although Se- 
bastian was not quite seven years old when he heard it, the full 
meaning of the speech went home. 

He never asked to go in his mother’s carriage after that unforgot- 
ten day. He never again went into the portico when she was going 
to her carriage ; never loitered in front of the steps to pat the horses’ 
satin coats, to look into their full, brown eyes — brown under a vel- 
vet film, large kind eyes wliich he had loved to contemplate. He 
shrunk away from that pompous equipage and the smart livery ser- 
vants, as from an unholy thing. The men had a way of grinning, of 
muttering confidences to each other, which he hated. Lisette was 
the only person in the house »whom he liked, and the time was fast 
coming when he should cease to trust even her. 

It seemed to him that he had been living for summers and winters 
innumerable in that house in the Bois de Boulogne. The geraniums 
and verbenas and heliotropes and calceolarias, a mass of scarlet and 
purple and gold, being revealed again and again ; the leaves falling 
and returning again ; and yet he was not nine years old. Days so 
idle and empty, a life so monotonous, seemed endless. He was 
nearly nine years old, and he was only an idle little vagabond in 
fine clothes. He could hardly read, although Lisette pretended to 
teach him — and Lisette was supposed to be a superior person, quite 
above the average lady’s maid. But in a house where the mistress 
lived only for dress and pleasure, and had, moreover, a certain fail- 


AN miMAELirE. 


9 


ing wliicli was only spoken of in whispers — that terrible failing of 
being 'sometimes just a little “out of herself ’’ — it was not to be 
supposed that the maid would be orderly or industrious. Lisette 
dressed like a woman of fashion in Mme. Caradec’s cast-off clothes, 
and her favorite occupation was to stroll in the Bois or to roam the 
streets of Paris under the excuse of giving the boy an airing. Se- 
bastian had many such airings, and grew to hate the streets of 
Paris, -where Lisette indulged all the instincts of a time flaneur, 
looking into print shops, jewelers’, booksellers’, milliners’, looking- 
on at street rows, listening to street music, reading the bills of the 
theatres. 

The house in the Bois was the kind of house which agents always 
call a bijou house, and was much better worthy that qualification 
than many houses so called. It had been built by a famous opera 
singer in the zenith of her career and sold by her in her decline. It 
was a thing of beauty in the genre Louis Quatorze, for people had 
not then discovered that your only true loveliness lies in the genre 
Louis Seize. 

It Avas a small house, on two floors ; the room panelled in white 
and gold, ceilings and doors jDainted with ciq^ids and rose garlands ; 
looking-glasses wherever they could be introduced; gilding every- 
where ; sofas and chairs and j^ortfiires of Gobelins tapestry. 

The rooms on the iqDper floor all opened out of a spacious central 
landing, lighted from the top ; the staircase descended in a circular 
sweep from this gallery, and every sound on the floor below travelled 
upward by this vdde opening, and was distinctly heard upon that 
upper story where Sebastian slept in a little room next to Lisette’s 
bed-chamber. 

Thus it happened that he was startled from his sleep one night by 
the sound of voices below— loud, angry, menacing ; and then came 
a peal of bitter laughter, and then a woman’s shriek. He leapt from 
his little bed and imshed to the gallery and looked over the gilded 
balustrade. There was no one in the hall below, where the lamp 
shed a soft light, tempered by ruby glass— a light that tinged the 
marble pavement and the white bearskin img at the foot of the stairs 
with roseate gleams. The hall was empty, but those angry voices 
were still sounding in the 'drawing-room. 

‘ ‘ Why did I ever trust my life with such a brute ? What could I 
see in you to like ? ” 

“You saw plenty of money— that was. what you like ! ” 

“ The meanness — to remind — obligations— insufferable vulgarity !” 
The words came in gasps, like javelins hurled in the face of a foe. 

“ You are insatiable— a bottomless pit for money ! ” 

“ A gambler — a profligate ! ” 

“ You drink like a fish ! ” 

“ Drink— oh, execrable liar — drink! Not an hour, not a day 
will I live under such insults. Here, and here, and here, take thein 
back — every one ! Your diamonds, do you suppose I value such 
dirt from a man capable ” 

And then came a burst of liystericai sobbing, a muttered oath in 
the man’s bass voice, a door flung open ])elow, a staggering, uncer- 


10 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


tain rush up the stairs, the swirl and rustle of a woman’s satin gown, 
a figure lurching against Sebastian as he clung to the balustrade, 
pushing by him unconscious of his presence. 

“Adieu ! ” called the bass voice from below ; “ remember when I 
say adieu, it means forever.” 

There was no reply from above. The swaying, tottering figure 
had vanished through the open door of madame’s bed-chamber. 
Stifled sobs, angry mutterings sounded faintly from within ; but 
there was no reply to that voice below. 

“Very well, then, it is adieu,” said the voice, and then came the 
sound of footsteps crossing the hall. The heavy outer door was 
opened and slammed to again, with a reverberation that sounded 
like the closing of a chapter in a life history. 


CHAPTEE II. 

“her feet go down to death.” 

Wlien that outer door shut with its sonorous clang, Sebastian had 
a feeling as of freedom and safety suddenly recovered. The dark 
man was gone. Those sinister eyes, which had so often contem- 
plated him with a moody look, were on the outside of the house. 
While the man was inside the boy had lived in ever-present dread 
of him and of that darkling look. He was gone now, and the man- 
ner of his departure meant that he was gone for ever. 

Sebastian crept through the half-open door into his mother’s bed- 
room, a little white figure in a night-gown. He crept across the 
thick Aubusson carpet, and squatted down on the edge of the estrade 
ui3on which his mother’s bed stood — a regal-looking bed, tall, 
splendid-looking, draped with amber satin and heavy old Flanders 
lace. 

How beautiful the room was in the soft light of the shaded lamp. 
Sebastian had never entered it till to-night. Among the mysteries 
and secrets of that house- this room had been the most mysterious. 
Sebastian had never dared to cross the threshold of that door. He 
had seen his mother emerge, radiant and beautiful, like a goddess 
from a temple ; but the temple was not for his feet to enter, and the 
boy, petted in one hour, thrust angrily aside in the next, had lost 
all the natural audacity of childhood. 

But to-night his mother was in trouble, and he wanted to comfort 
her if he could. He clambered upon the bed and put his arms round 
her, and kissed her wet cheek. She murmured some broken words, 
and then dropped into a heavy sleep, disturbed now and again by a 
gi-oan or a little cry, as of pain. The boy slipped gently from her 
side and sat on the estrade, with his head leaning against the bed, 
and looked wonderingly round the room. 

Yes, It was very beautiful ; a room modelled upon that old stately 
pattern of Versailles in the days of the great king ; a miniature re- 
yu’oduction of that room in which the mighty Louis lay dying, with 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


11 


Mme. de Maintenon and all his conrtiers watching the last flicker of 
that expiring light. Dressing table, with scattered jewels amidst a 
litter of ivory brushes and silver hand-mirrors, cut crystal bottles, 
fans, jewel caskets, sachets, wardrobes with doors of marqueterie 
and ormolu. Everything was costly and more or less artistic, and 
the mistress of all this finery lay there like a log, sleeping off the 
fumes of wine. 

The days that followed that night were the happiest days of Sebas- 
tian’s childhood. His mother and Lisette went off to the sea the 
next morning, carrying the boy with them. It was August and di- 
vine weather. They stayed at Dieppe, at a hotel facing the sea, and 
sat upon the beach half the day, and drove about the country the 
other half, and dined together in a pretty little room with a balcony 
overlooking the sea, and after dinner Sebastian went to bed and 
slept soundly ; steeped in fresh air and sunshine, and the bliss of 
fancying himself beloved by his mother ; while Mine. Caradec and 
Lisette went to the casino, where the lady gambled and the nniid 
looked on. 

These halcyon days lasted for about a fortnight, by the end of 
which time Mme. Caradec had spent or lost all her money. She 
went back to Paris, expecting to find her lover subjugated by this 
hard treatment, unable to endure life without her, and ready to 
grovel at her feet for pardon. Instead of this state of things she 
found an auctioneer’s bills pasted against the walls of her bijou 
villa. Minions of the law were in possession of the splendors that 
had been nominally hers. The door of the fairy palace in the wood 
was shut against her for evermore. 

The blow was sharp and went home. Still in the zenith of her 
charms, Mme. Caradec had believed until this moment that her 
power over her slave was limitless. From the day of her arrival at 
Bourbon, beautiful, triumphant, happy in her escape from a hus- 
band she hated and in her union with a lover she adored, Laurent 
Deschanel, the rich creole, had been her devoted admirer. He had 
followed her like a shadow, had endured all the arrows of an inso- 
lent tongue, and all the outrages which a proud and passionate 
woman, doubly sensitive on account of her false position, her blighted 
name, could heap upon the man who dared to assail her constancy, 
to try to tempt her from the lover for whom she sacrificed home and 
country. She had laughed at his love, and the sordid temptations 
which he offered — a settlement — jewels — a position such as Lucien 
Kochefort could never give her. 

Then came the bloody close of her brief day of bliss, and she was 
alone in a remote colony, without a friend, without a counsellor, out- 
lawed by her sin and almost penniless. Laurent Deschanel seized 
his opportunity. A month after Lucien’s death, when Mine. Cara- 
dec had tasted the cup of bitterness and desolation, he came to her 
in a new character— he came as consoler, adviser, friend ; he offered 
her his purse, just as slie was beginning to feel the horror of being 
lienniless in a strange land. She received him with scant civility, 
but she accepted the use of his purse, and six months afterward she 


12 


AN NAUMAELITE. 


left tlie island, where her presence was a scandal, as Laurent Des- 
chanel’s mistress. The man adored her, but he was a creole w'ith 
all the creole vices. They led a life of sensuous ease, of frivolous 
pleasure, recognizing no higher law" than their own fancy, no higher 
aim than the enjoyment of the hour. Their life for the most part 
had been made up of quarrels and reconciliations, and many of 
those quarrels had been every w-hit as violent as that last dispute 
after w'hich M. Leschanel had cried “Good-by, forever.” Coralie 
fancied this quarrel w"Ould end as the others had ended ; and that 
Laurent would be all the more her slave because of that fortniglit of 
severence. He w^ould have discovered the emptiness of life w'ithout 
♦ his idol. 

Mme. Caradec did not know that her slave had for some time past 
been somew'hat weary of his chains ; and that an idol who takes too 
much fine champagne and chartreuse, and has fits of gloom and 
nervous crises of passionate despair in her cups, bewailing the bit- 
terness of Fate and the loss of honor, is apt to pall upon her w"or- 
shipper. She woke from a dream of despotic pow’er to find herself 
an outcast, friendless in the streets of Paris, face to face with stern 
reality for the first time in her life. Mistress and maid put their 
heads together, and after much driving to and fro in a hired car- 
riage, they found lodgings in a somewhat tawdry hotel in the Rue 
St. Honore. The rooms w"ere expensive, the furniture was gaudy, 
and Sebastian saw his small figure in a velvet tunic and lace collar 
reflected at every angle in the tall looking-glasses which adorned the 
room. It seemed to him as if the chief furniture of the apartments 
consisted of looking-glasses and ormolu clocks. He heard the mo- 
notonous tick, tick, tick on every side, go where he would. The 
street was narrow- and the heavily draped windows let in the gloom 
of a dull gray evening. Everything was different from the lovely 
little house in the wood yonder. 

“Mamma,” cried Sebastian, hanging on his mother’s satin gow’n, 
“ w'hen are w-e going home again?” 

“ Never ! ” she answ-ered angrily, with hoarse, thickened accents 
W’hich the boy knew’ too well — her evening voice. ‘ ‘ We have no 
home.” 

After this came other changes. They seemed to be always remov- 
ing to new lodgings. Lisette managed everything. Madame seldom 
loft her room till late in the afternoon. At one time they occupied 
an apartment in the Champs Elysees — pretty little rooms with low 
ceilings, an entresol looking into a small garden, where Sebastian 
could play in his lonely, dreary fashion, very tired of solitude and 
confinement. On fine evenings he w’ent out with Lisette and saw 
the lamps and heard the music in a garden near, and played with 
strange children, wdiile Lisette conversed w’ith her numerous friends. 
His mother w’as seldom at home of an evening. He saw’ less of her 
now’ than even under the Deschanel dominion, severe as that regime 
had been. 

Strange faces came and W’ent across the shifting scenes of Sebas- 
tian’s life at this period, faces which never grew’ friendly or w’elcome 
to him. There was a stout elderly man, w’ith gray mustaches, who 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


13 

seemed to liave some kind of authority, and with whom Sebastian’s 
moilier had terrible quarrels, which recalled the scene in the villa 
garden. He disappeared when they left the Champs Elysees, and 
now their lodgings got shabbier and shabbier, until Sebastian, after 
having been awakened suddenly out of his sleep one night, huddled 
hastily in his clothes, and hurried off in a fiacre, awoke in the gray 
winter light to a wretched, bare-looking little room with white- 
washed walls. He had never seen such a room in his life before. 
It was like a cell in a prison. There was nothing but a little iron 
bedstead and a rush-bottomed chair. He got uj) and stood upon 
the chair to look out of the window, and he turned sick and cold at 
sight of the yard below him. He was on a sixth story. Long rows 
of windows faced him on the other side of a quadrangle ; shabby 
windows, with every variety of blind or cuidain — with clothes hang- 
ing out to dry — with all those signs of humble poverty which were 
new to Sebastian. 

He took fright suddenly. Why had he been brought to such a 
place ? Various appalling stories of child-stealers, wherewith Lis- 
ette had beguiled the weariness of long winter nights, flashed across 
his mind. He had been stolen last night when he had been too sleepy 
to be quite sure who carried him down-stairs and put him in the 
fiacre, and brought to this dreadful place — a prison for stolen chil- 
dren. He was going to rush out of the room in a panic when he 
heard a familiar voice close by. It was Lisette singing the last 
popular refrain, “ Eaut pas fermer I’ceil,” in her Porte St. Martin 
voice, close by. Yes, Lisette was in the adjoining room, with which 
the door of his little cell, or closet, communicated. He rattled at 
the door, which was bolted, and Lisette opened it and admitted him 
to a ])are-looking room with a few poor sticks of furniture, a table, 
a commode with a cracked marble top, a tawdry gilt clock that had 
long left off going, a round table and a wretched little bed in a cor- 
ner. There was a smaller room within, for Mme. Caradec, who must 
have her den in which to sleep half the day. There was a coffee- 
])ot on a black iron stove, which projected into the room, and there 
were some j^rei^arations for breakfast, scanty enough, on the table. 
Evervthing had a barren, poveHy-stricken look. Sebastian did not 
know that his mother and her confidential seiwant had lived on 
credit as long as the tradesmen would trust them, and that this sud- 
den plunge into abject poverty was the natural result of exhausted 
credit. To Sebastian the change appeared unnatural. But Sebas- 
tian was not a pampered child. He was not accustomed to have his 
comfort studied, his wishes gratified. He had been flung about like 
a ball all his little life, put here or put there, caressed or thrust 
aside, as suited the convenience of his owners. And now he eat his 
breakfast of a roll without any butter, and a cup of coffee, without 
ventui'ing to question Lisette about the sudden change in his sur- 
roundings. TTI-i. 

As the time went on the boy grew accustomed to this squalid life. 
It was a long, long winter— joyless days, dismal nights, for his 
mother and Lisette wore never at home of an evening. He spent 
those long evenings in utter solitude, locked in the bare, cheerless 


14 


All ISHMAELITE. 


room, listening to all the sounds of the huge, uncleanly barrack, in 
which he lived, sounds of brawling, strife, drunken fury, drunken 
mirth, cries of .murder sometimes, and the crash of furniture thrown 
over, the dull thud of a cruel blow, children squalling, nalpd feet 
pattering along the brick-floored passage, vulgar voices singing vul- 
gar songs, whistling, screaming, laughter, and now and th’en for 
variety a visit from the police. 

So the boy passed his tenth birthday, steeped in ignorance — for 
Lisette had long ago abandoned her feeble attemjpts at tuition — and 
very weary of his first decade of existence. 

His mother and her companion had found an occupation for their 
evenings at a theatre in this wretched quarter, a theatre frequented 
by workmen and their womenkind, and where the entertainment 
was of the strongest order. Mme. Caradec’s beauty and Lisette’s 
impudence were theii’ only recommendations for the dramatic pro- 
fession. Madame was engaged as a showy figure in a fairy specta- 
cle. She had but to stand where she was put — a nymph draped in 
spangled gauze in a tinsel grotto. Lisette, the brighter and clev- 
erer of the two, was intrusted with a speaking part, and sang her 
half dozen couplets, in the approved style, “ with intention.” 

Sebastian was not allowed to go to the theatre where his mother 
was engaged. It was to him a mystery, but he heard the two women 
talk of it as they sat late into the night drinking some yellow liquid, 
which looked like melted gold in their glasses, and which they 
spoke of laughingly by all kinds of strange names. Sebastian used 
to hear them talking late into the night, from the little iron bed- 
stead in his cell. He had too little air and exercise in the long 
dreary day to sleep well at night. 

Life went on after this fasliion all tlirough the winter. On Sun- 
days Mme. Caradec slept till evening, or else rose ‘rather earlier than 
usual, and went out with Lisette, dressed in her best gown, for a 
day’s pleasure. Sel)astian never knew where they went, or what 
their pleasures were, save from their disjointed talk after these revels 
about the dishes they had eaten and the wine they had drunk. His 
mother’s best gown and bonnet had a slovenly air now. The satin 
was frayed, the sleeves worn ragged at the edges. The Indian shawl 
had lost its beautiful coloring, and had been darned in ever so many 
places by Lisette, who now dressed as well as her mistress with the 
cast-oft’ finery that had been flung to her in days gone by. A good 
deal of this finery had gone to the pawnbroker’s, but enough was 
left to make the maid as much a lady as madame. 

Spring came. March winds — bitter, biting winds, which seemed 
to work their oavii will in the great bare barrack, with its endless 
corridors and its hundred rooms, carpetless boards, bricked passages, 
a house that was old before it had lost its air of raw newness, wood- 
work shrunk, panels of the doors split, staircase Avails green Avith 
dirt and grease. EA^ery one Avho rubbed against the wall seemed to 
leaA^e the taint and smear of filth behind ; every one AA-^ho mounted 
the stairs left the print of dirty boots. 

There were no shutters, no curtains, no draperies to shut out the 
cold. The east Avind shrieked and whistled in the passages as in a 


AN TSIIMAELITE. 


15 


•idioiintain glen. Mine. Caradec complained that a villainous cough, 
U’hich had fixed its claws upon her at Christmas, would never be 
any better as long as she lived in that infected hole. She was very 
angry when Lisette suggested that the cough might go if she would 
leave off drinking brandy. 

“ Why do you drink it yourself if it is poison ? ” she asked. 

“I only take a taste now and then, to keep you company,” an- 
swered Lisette, which was not true, although there is no doubt the 
mistress had taught the maid to drink. 

That bleak March made madame’s cough much worse. It grew so 
bad that she was obliged to give up her engagement — her twenty 
francs a week — at the theatre ; her Sunday feastings on the boule- 
vard or in the suburbs. 

Her cheeks were hollow, her eyes brilliant with hectic light. She 
was no fit occupant for a tinsel grotto, for Juno’s peacock car, or 
the palaces of the fairy queen. Lisette, who had developed some 
talent in the soubrette line, was now the only bread winner, and her 
thirty francs a week did not go very far. Before that month of 
March was over everything that could be taken to the pawnbroker’s 
had been so taken, even to Mme. Caradec’s last satin gown and 
Indian shawl, and the large Leghorn bonnet, with its marabout 
plumage. She had only a peignoir left ; but as she hardly ever left 
her bed now, this did not much matter. 

She was sorely ill, and suffered a great deal. While Lisette was 
at the theatre, Sebastian used to sit by his mother’s bed for hours, 
deeply sorry for her, full of silent pity. He gave her brandy when 
she asked for it, if there was any there to give. Who could refuse 
her the only thing that seemed to give her relief from that terrible 
opiDre^sion, that labor and pain in every breath she drew ? The boy 
understood dimly, from Lisette’s talk, that it was wrong to drink 
brandy ; but he knew that sick people must have physic, and this 
yellow stuff, which shone and sparkled in the glass, seemed the only 
physic that was of any use to his mother. A doctor came in once or 
twice a week and looked at her, and went through certain formali- 
ties with a stethoscope, and took his fee of a couple of francs and 
went away again, without having been of any more use than the 
organ-grinder dowm in the street below, grinding the same operatic 
airs over and over again on certain days of the week. 

One day, when this doctor had paid his visit, Lisette followed him 
into the corridor and came back a few minutes afterward with her 
wicked little Parisian face all blotted with tears — that audacious 
countenance which had so many grimaces for the blouses in the pit 
and gallery yonder. Sebastian asked her why she was crying, but 
slie frowned at him and pointed to the bed for her only answer ; 
and he knew that she was sorry for his mother whose breathing was 
so painful, and whose hands and face scorched him when he caressed 
her. There were two red fever-spots on her hollow' cheeks, and her 
eyes shone like glass. 

Later in the evening, wdien Lisette had put on her cloak and bon- 
net to go to the theatre, Sebastian heard her talking with one of her 
gossii^s in the con’idor. 


16 


AN IS] TM A ELITE. 


“ She will die,” said Lisette, “and who is to pay for her funeral? 
She was born a lady, j)oor thing. It would be hard if she were 
taken away upon the i^oor people’s common bier to be flung into 
their common grave.” 

“ Is there no one?” asked the neighbor. 

“There are three or four. I have written to them all. One an- 
swered — he who once thought gold too common for her — that she 
might starve or rob for aught he cared. Another sent me twenty 
louis at the beginning of her illness, but told me not to trouble him 
again. Another gave no answer. There is only the husband left. 
I think, perhaps, he would pay for the funeral for the sake of being- 
sure he had got i-id of her. ” 

‘ ‘ Why don’t you write to him ? ” 

“ She would be so angry,” murmured Lisette. 

“ How can that matter ? She will be dead before he can answer 
your letter.” 

The neighbor was right. Lisette wrote to Eaymond Caradec, of 
Pen-Hoel, by the next day’s post ; and Coralie was dead before her 
husband came in person to answer her handmaid’s letter. 

She was lying on her shabby bed in the wretched lodging, two tall 
wax candles burning on the little table beside her pillow, and a 
little spray of box lying between them. They had folded her hands 
uijon her breast, and laid a cheap little metal crucifix and a twenty- 
sous rosary above them. All the taint and soil of her sins had van- 
ished from the marble face. It was almost as beautiful as the day 
she came out of her convent school to plight her faith to Eaymond 
Caradec. His youth came back to him, all the fervor and hope of 
that day, as he stood looking down at his dead wife in the chilly 
gray March afternoon, amidst the sordid surroundings of the work- 
men’s quarter, bare walls, dirt, squalor. He, the proud bearer of a 
good old name, the dishonored husband, knelt down and touched 
the marble hand with liis lips. He had hated her while she lived, 
but pity melted the ice at his heart, the awfulness of death was 
stronger than anger or revenge. 

He said a iwayer, dipped his finger in the holy water beside the 
bed, crossed himself, and went back to the sitting-room, where Li- 
sette and Sebastian stood waiting for him. The boy’s pale face turned 
toward him wistfully, as if entreating for a father’s kindness. 

Caradec hardly glanced at his son. He took out his purse and 
unfolded three or four bank-notes, which he handed to Lisette. 

“ There is money for the funeral. Let it be simple but decent,” 
he said, “and let there be no name on the coffin or the headstone. 
Initials and a date will be enough. She will be buried at Mont- 
martre of course ? ” 

“ That is nearest,” said Lisette. 

“ And the nearest is best. Why loiter on the last stage of a jour- 
ney ?” said Caradec, with a saturnine smile. “ The boy will go back 
to Brittany with me.” 

Sebastian put his arms around Lisette’s neck. After all, slie was 
the only friend he had ever known since he parted from his sailor 
friends on tlie steamer. 


yl^Y ISIIMAELITE. 


17 


‘‘ May not she go with ns?” he asked. 

“No, child ; there is nothing for mademoiselle to do at Pen-Hoel, 
and snch an accomplished young person would not like to be buried 
in a country chateau,” answered the count scoffingly. 

He had a carriage at the door. Lisette put Sebastian’s poor little 
wardrobe into a small valise, and the^three went down-stairs together, 
the workmen whom they met on the stairs, the women and children 
at their open doors — all staring at the tall, dark, gentleman who had 
such a grand look, and who was leading the shabby, out-at-elbows 
little lad down the dirty stair by the collar of his threadbare jacket. 
Everybody wanted to know what it all meant. Lisette had ample 
entertainment offered her by her gossijos when she went upstaii-s 
again. A “ goutte ” here, and another “ goutte ” there, would she 
but only talk her fill, and tell all that could be told about the hand- 
some corpse lying in the candle-lit room yonder, and the handsome 
gentleman who had just gone down-stairs. 


CHAPTER III. 

“CKUEL AS THE GRAVE.” 

Monsieur Caradec and his son left the Rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau 
that evening by the Malle Poste for Brest, quite the rapidest way of 
travelling in those days. They sat side by side in the coupe, with 
one other traveller, and travelled all that night and all the next day. 
It was in the twilight of a cold spring evening that Sebastian saw 
the towers and pinnacles of Mont St. Michel stand darkly out against 
the yellow sunset sky, and the gray sea deepening to purple toward 
the distant horizon. The whole of the journey had been full of in- 
terest to him. His young limbs had been cold and cramped half the 
time ; but his young eyes had devoured the landscape, his young 
soul had drunk deep of delight. The trees and fields, the hilis and 
valleys, the winding streams and dark mysterious woods — all these 
were new to the young captive of the city, who had longed with a 
l^assionate longing for escape from the blank and dreary monotony 
of stone walls, dirt, and squalor. That house in the Faubourg Mont- 
martre had hung upon him like a nightmare, had crushed his young' 
spirit, dulled his young blood. What ineffable rapture, then, to bo 
borne swiftly along these dewy country roads, to see the river shin- 
ing under the stars, to watch the moon rushing among the clouds — 
lie never suspected it was the clouds that wont so fast, and not the 
moon — to hear the kine lowing in their willowy pastures — the village 
cock crowing as the mail-cart drove past farms and cottages in the 
sunrise. What a delight to descend at the village inn for a hasty 
snatch of food, a cup of coffee, a crust of bread and butter, and thten 
up again and away — the post-cart stops for neither king nor kaiser — 
and so, and so, till in the deepening dusk they alighted at the bot- 
tom of the hill crowned by the tun-ets and gable ends of Pen-Hoel. 


18 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


After this came a life of solitude and abandonment almost as com- 
l)lete as that of the fairy palace in the wood near Passy. The count 
had taken his boy back to the chateau because it was the easiest way 
of disposing of him, not for any love that he bore to Sebastian. 
What love could he feel for a boy who seemed to him the incarna- 
tion of past wrongs ? His own son, yes ; but it was of Coralie he 
thought when he looked at the boy, albeit Sebastian was a true 
Caradec, dark-eyed, tall, broad-shouldered, with marked features 
and a proud carriage of the head. 

Paymond let his son run wild, saw as little of him as possible, and 
thought he had done his duty to the boy in the way of education 
when he had engaged the services of the village priest — a benevolent 
old man, born in the peasant class, and no marvel of erudition — as 
Sebastian’s tutor. Father Bressant was horritied when he found 
that at eleven years of age Sebastian could neither read nor write, 
and the first year of his tuition was devoted to these elements of all 
learning and" the church catechism. In the second year the cure 
taught his pupil a little Latin and the history of France, as made 
and i)rovided by the historians of Port Eoyal. The hours given to 
study were of the shortest, for Sebastian chafed against the confine- 
ment within four walls. His wild, free life satisfied all the longings 
of his nature. He rode, he fished, he shot and hunted with the 
instinct of a born sportsman. He had hardly a friend of his own 
class, but he made friends for himself of gamekeepers and peasants, 
of poachers and fishermen, of smugglers and coastguardsmen. He 
spent many a night far afield under the stars, engaged in some kind 
of sport, and crept into the house at daybreak before any of the 
**Servauts were astir. The wanderers of the countryside, the pillawer 
with his little cart of foul rags, the peddler with his pack, the col- 
porteur with his case of books — he conversed with all these and was 
at home with them at once. He talked with them of that great city 
which they visited now and again, full of wonder and respect for its 
splendors, and which he knew and loathed. 

By the time he had been two years at Pen-Hoel he loved the place 
and its surroundings with an intense love. There was not a bank 
or a coppice, a willow or a water-pool, a clump of Spanish chestnuts 
or an old wall feathered over with fern-fronds which Sebastian did 
not know by heart. The gardeners and farm laborers, the grooms 
and gamekeepers, and all the villagers around loved him. He was 
as a king among them. If there had been need of a nevr Vendee 
Sebastian Caradec could have raised a regiment. All the country- 
side would have flocked to the sound of his drum. Everybody 
loved the bold, frank, handsome, open-handed boy except his father. 
Baymond Caradec could not forgive his son for the traitorous blood 
in his vt'ins, for his involuntary share in the past. He had been his 
mother’s companion in her vicious career — in her degringolade. He 
had diiink in the cup of her pleasures, perhaps basked in the luxury 
of sin. The count had never dared to question his son as to that 
jrast history. There were hideous pages in the boy’s life which he 
shrunk from opening. But sometimes, on those rare occasions when 
the father and son wore alone together-, Baymond Caradec would 


AN ISHMA ELITE. 


19 


fall into a reverie, seeing with his mind’s eye that past life with all 
its loathsome details — feasting, revelry, fine clothes, a thick, hot 
mist of wine fumes and lamp-light clouding the atmosphere of a 
gaudily furnished saloon. Friends had told him something of his 
wife’s existence in Paris, the money she had squandered, the train 
she had led. He asked no questions, he winced at the sound of his 
wife’s name. But there are people who will put their finger tips 
uxwn gaping wounds by way of friendship, and Eaymond Caradec 
knew what manner of life the dead woman had lived. He associ- 
ated his innocent son with all that horror and shame. l\’hat bless- 
ing could he hope from a boy reared in such iniquity ? Yet there 
were times when the boy’s frank outlook and noble face impressed 
him in sjute of himself, and he was almost kind to his son. Unhax)- 
l)ily these intervals of fatherly feeling were of the rarest. 

When Sebastian had been about a year and a half at Pen-Hoel, 
and had become, as it were, a living part of the hills and woods, for- 
getful of all the life he had known before he came there, the count 
went to Paris with an old college friend who had dropj^ed upon 
Pen-Hoel unexx^ectedly, from the stars, as it were — one autumn 
night, and who, after staying three days at the chateau, tempted M. 
Caradec to accomxDany him to the great city, where he had a wife 
and an apartment ill the Rue de Crenelle. It was late in October, 
the hops were picked, the apples were garnished, the sarasin fields 
were brown and bare, autumn winds shrieked and howled round the 
old house as if they would have blown down its quaint old turrets, 
the brazen weathercock groaned and scrooped in its iron socket, 
the solid old casements rattled and shook— a dreary season for the 
master of Pen-Hoel, who had long ceased to care for sport. Every- 
body would be coming back to Paris after the season of the ville- 
giatura. The theatres were opening. The town would be at its best. 
Raymond Caradec, who felt himself becoming xwematurely old, a 
creature sunk in gloom and hopelessness, accepted the invitation, 
but with reserve. 

“You and your wife will find me sorry conii^any,” he said. “I . 
have let myself rust too long.” 

“Never 'too late to rub the rust off,” answered M. Lanion, his 
friend. “ My wife is a- very good little person, and will do her ut- 
must to enliven you.” 

Thus urged, Ravmond risked the experiment. He felt a little de- 
pavse for the first-day or so, amid the bourgeoise comfort and home- 
lilie air of the apartment in the Rue de Crenelle. He had never 
known what it was to have a home since his mother’s death, and 
these handsome old rooms, in which the substantial Empire furniture 
was brightened bv the graceful additions of womanly taste— lamps, 
flowers, books, piano, harp, had the air of a newly discovered coun- 
trv, a hitherto unimagined jiaradise. The piano was Mme. Lanion’s 
particular function, the harp belonged to her sister, a delicate fair- 
haired girl of twenty, who had been left an orphan within the last 
three vears, and had lived with her sister since their bereavement. 
The sikers were both musical. They sang, and played duets for haiq> 
and piano. 


20 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


Adele de Guirandat Avas not a beautiful woman. She did not im- 
press the stranger with her charms at a glance, or lead him captive 
with a smile and a word. She had a fragile elegance which pleased 
his fastidious tastes. She Avas reserved, without shyness, and after 
a little Avhile, when he became interested in her, she seemed to him 
the fair embodiment of feminine purity. Her manners, her moA^e- 
ments, her dress were all distinguished by that gracefulness which 
is the highest charm in a woman. Caradec did not ask himself 
whether she was good tempered, warm-heai-ted, frank, brave — of 
those grander qualities Avhich make the nobility of woman’s character 
he thought but little before this quiet perfection, these outw’ard graces 
of a young lady educated in a convent, polished and refined in the 
society of all that Avas most intellectual in Paris. M. Lanion occu- 
pied an official post of some importance, was a man of culture, and 
kneAV all the best people in both parties — Legitimist and Oiieanist. 
Politics Avere tolerably smooth in Paris just now. The people were 
satisfied Avith their Citizen King, although they made their little 
jokes about him, his pear-shaped countenance, his trick of bidding 
for cheap popularity, his little affectations of bourgeoiserie, and that 
strain of avarice which is, after all, the universal felloAV-feeling that 
makes the Avhole world kin. 

Possibly, when M. Lanion urged his old iriend to take up his 
abode in the Eue de Crenelle for a while, he may haA^e had some 
dim notion of the thing AA'hich had come to pass. He may have told 
himself that the proprietor of Pen-Hoel, with his fine old chateau 
and an income Avhich, although modest, was all-sufficient for the 
comfort and conventionalities of life in Brittany, AAmuld be no un- 
worthy alliance for his sister-in-law. Adfele had been three years in 
Paris. She had been generally admired, but she had attracted no 
eligible suitor ; and Lanion, Avho adored his wife, was beginning to 
be a little weary of this domicile a trois. He wanted to have the 
family hearth for himself and his Laure. They had no children, 
and Avere all in all to each other. Adele was \"ery sAveet, but she 
Avas an incubus. 

So Avhen he saw Caradec interested, charmed, growing daily fond- 
er, he did his uttermost to fan the flame. Yes, Adele was quite 
the most amiable girl he had ever met with. She had all the per- 
fections of Laure, Avith additional graces, Avdrich were quite her own. 
There were not half a dozen young Avomen in Paris Avho could play 
the harp as well as she did. A difficult, ungrateful instrument. 
And then, how she sung ! Mon Dieu, what finish, what expression! 
Garcia had given her lessons after she came to Paris, and had almost 
wept at the thought that such a voice should be wasted in drawing- 
rooms, half appreciated by senseless people who kneAv nothing about 
music. 

Caradec agreed with every word of this praise. He had listened 
with rapture to the harp, Avhich brought the white arms and slender 
Avaist of the player into such ])rominence. The voice in Avhich she 
sang a ballad of Hugo’s or of Musset’s— a little thing in Italian by 
he kneAV not whom — was sAveetness itself. But Avas it possible that 
such an accomplished young lady Avould endure the monotony of a 


Aj^ ISHMAELITE. 


2J 


chateau on the edge of Brittany, would receive the addresses of a 
widower, a man grown old before his time, broken down by the 
burden of past sorrows, of intolerable memories ? 

“My dear fellow’, I admit yon were rather dismal w’hen yon first 
came among ns,” answ’ered Lanion, langhing at his friend’s gravity; 

bnt yon are improving daily. Stay a week or two longer and yon 
w’ill be as young as the youngest of ns.” 

Caradec sighed and shook his head. Bnt he yielded to his friend’s 
urgency, and stayed in the Bne de Grenelle. There was plenty of 
room for him in that spacious second-floor entree conr et jardin. 
His host and hostess made much of him. They took him to the 
opera-house, where “ Robert the Devil ” was still a novelty. They 
took him to see Rachel, then in her zenith. She had just revealed 
the dei)th and grandeur of her iDOW’ers in Ph(5dre, that one character 
wTiicli all the critics had vow’ed she would never be able to play. It 
was a less brilliant Paris than the glittering city of the Empire ; but 
it w^as a very delightful city, nevertlieless, and Caradec lingered there 
as amid scenes of enchantment. 

One evening he took courage and offered himself to Adele. It 
w'as Mme. Lanion’s Tuesday, when all the nicest officials and a few 
of tlie choicest people in the w’orld of art and literature came to drink 
weak tea served at ten o’clock, and nibble sweet cakes in the Rue de 
Grenelle. Adele had performed ujwn the liarj^, had sung three of 
her little songs — her whole repertoire consisted of about six — and 
now" they were alone in the smaller salon, which W’as half a library ; 
the company W"ere gathered round the W’ood fire in the larger room, 
talking politics. That inner room w’as dimly lighted by a pair of 
wax candles on the velvet-draj^ed mantelpiece, and in that half- 
obscurity Raymond took heart of grace, and drew a little nearer to 
Ad Te, as she stood in one of her graceful attitudes, her elbow rest- 
ing on the low mantelpiece, the beautiful arm shining like alabaster 
under the large gauze sleeve, the slender figure exquisitely set off by 
the broad w’aistband and buckle w’hich girdled her wliite satin gown. 
He asked her in all humility if she could many a man with whom 
the freshness of youth was past, if she could be content with life in 
a solitary country house. 

“ We are not quite in a desert,” he said, apologetically ; “ we have 
neighbors at Avranches, w"hich is not ten miles off — rather an im- 
2 :»ortant town.” 

She looked dowm, blushing a little, listening with an amused 
smile to his faltered ajDologies. She was no more in love with him 
than with yonder statuette of the Belvedere, Axwllo ; but slie was 
tired of 'making a third in her sister’s household, and she had an 
inkling that her brothei^in-law" was getting tired of her. That sort 
of thing ought to finish, and there had been no one else to offer a 
speedy denouement. 

“ You would bring your wife to Paris at least once a year, I hope, 
monsieur, ’’.she said, smiling, with low’ered eyelids. 

He caught her hand in his and kissed it joassionately. 

“ That means yes,” she said. 

French ijeople have no idea of long engagements. They disi^atch 


22 


AN mmiAEJATE, 


the doomed with an alarming promptitnde. The Comte de Pen- 
Hoel left Paris next day to regulate his affairs in Brittany, returned 
to the metropolis in three weeks to sign the mariiage contract and 
to be married at the church of St. Sulpice, with all befitting solem- 
nity. His wife’s harp was packed and ready, with her trousseau, and 
the corbeil containing the usual cashmere shawl, a set of amethysts 
and diamonds which had belonged to Caiadec’s mother, and some 
more modern jewels, new purchased, notably a gold bandeau for the 
hair, set with emeralds, such as they had seen liachel wear in Zaire 
below her gauze turban. 

Raymond Caradec was a x^roud man the day he carried his young 
wife iiome to the old chateau — proud of having won a pure and x^er- 
fect creature to be his comx^anion, a being beside whose purity the 
sins of the dead woman lying in the cemetery at Montmartre were 
dark as the crimes . of the Princess Dahut, guilty daughter of the 
good King Gradlan, the Arthur of Brittany. 

They posted all the way from Paris to Pen-Hoel, and the journey 
was slow and costly. The fair young bride had a weary look when 
the carriage crossed the little bridge iinder the Norman portcullis 
which ‘still guarded the chateau. Wintry mists veiled the country 
side. All was gray and chill, save for the faint yellow light of a 
December sunset, with a gleam of red here and there ux)on the steel- 
gray river. Adide shuddered. She had never been farther from 
Paris than Fontainebleau in her life before, and Fontainebleau 
was Paris in miniature as comx^ared with the villages through which 
she x^assed on this long and dismal day — queer old stone cottages, i 
ancient crones sxunning in doorways and windows, like the wicked j 
fairies in old story-books, x^easant boys riding on cow's, magxhes, | 
priests, a girl astride a donkey between a x'lair of heavily laden x^an- 
niers. Was she to live the greater x:>art of her life among such bar- 
barians ? Already she had begun to speculate whether it w'ould be 
possible to x'>ersuade her husband to sell Pen-Hoel and take an 
airartment in the Rue St. Guillaume or the Rue de Lille. Paris — | 

her beautiful Paris — wdth its theatres and churches, its music and | 
splendor ! It was but two days since she had left that lovely city, ! 
and she was pining to go back already. " i 

Caradec had been observant of her all day, and had seen that she 
W'as neither x">leased nor interested in anything she saw^ They had 
breakfasted at Coutances, and spent an hour in the cathedral. Tliey 
had stood on a height to see the Channel Islands yonder— Herm 
and Sark and Alderney — gray in a gray sea. They had stopxDed 
at Granville — another old church on a height, solitary sands, a 
shabby town ; but the drive from Granville to Avranches, the ascent I 
to the town on the hill, w'as lovely. let Adcffe.had admired 
nothing. i 

I am afraid you are very tired,” said her husband. | 

“I have one of my bad headaches,” she answered languidly ; and 
he learned for the first time that she was subject to chronic headache. 

^ From this time forw'ard the headache w^as established as a domes- 
tic institution. When Mine. Caradec had her headache no one was 
to say anything to her, or to extract anything from her. She was 


AN ISllMAELITE. 


23 


to look as miserable or as ill-tempered as- she pleased. Nobody was 
to complain. It was only madame’s headache. 

“I should have liked you to be well enough to enjoy the ap- 
proach to Avranches,” said Caradec ; “it is such a picturesque 
drive.” 

And now they were in the little park of Pen-Hoel. The car- 
riage wound slowly up the hill, and there was the chateau in front 
of them. There had been a castle in the days of Charles of Blois — 
a feudal castle — in that fine position ; and there were old walls and 
an old tower interwoven with the existing building, which dated 
from the time of Henry the Fourth. Adele gave a piteous look 
wdien she saw the low ceilings and thick walls, the deeply sunk 
windows and stone mullions. She detested an old house. Her only 
complaint against the Faubourg St. Germain had been that it was 
not built yesterday. 

But the old house, with its dingy coloring, its ponderous worm- 
eaten furniture of carved oak or walnut, was not the worst thing at 
Pen-Hoel. The appearance of that tall, handsome lad, who came 
forward shyly to greet his father and his father’s bride was a much 
greater trial for Mine. Caradec’s somewhat difficult temper. She 
knew that there was a child of the former marriage, but she had 
pictured to herself a little fellow in the nursery, a baby that could 
give her no trouble. This tall, broad-shouldered, dark-eyed boy 
was a personage. 

“ Mon Dieu,” she muttered to herself, “ am I always to live in a 
trinity ? ” 

She gave Sebastian the tips of her gloved fingers and he looked at 
her with dark eyes full of doubt. The idea of his father’s second 
marriage had been distasteful to him in the abstract ; it was more 
than ever obnoxious now that he saw the lady. 

“ You can go to your usual amusements,” said Caradec, when ho 
had shaken hands with his son, who had been waiting about in front 
of the chateau for the last two hours to give his father a respectful 
greeting, inspired to this politeness by the good old priest, his tutor. 

The boy |)erfectly understood the permission. He was not wanted 
in the newly organized home, any more than he had been wanted in 
the old one. He went off to his companion, the gamekeeper, and 
Xdanned the next day’s sport. He had his sui:)per in the kitchen 
that night, feeling too shy to enter the rooms occupied by the new 
mistress of Pen-Hoel. The kitchen was a mighty stone hall, with a 
fireplace as big as a room ; gamekeepers, gardeners, and farm-ser- 
vants had their meals there, and Sebastian was like a king among 
til un. At his bidding the old men told their stories of gnomes and 
fairies and crooned their old ballads, thirty or forty verses long, 
about the heroes and scourges of Brittany. The fare was of the 
roughest — hard cheese, hard cider, black bread ; but the meals were 
gayer than in the stately old room yonder, with its dark oak panel- 
ling and carved furniture, its vessels of shining brass and silver, its 
old Rouen ])otterv. 

Little liy little 'it grew to be an accepted fact that Sebastian should 
take his nioals with' tlie servants. “ He liked it better,” his step- 


24 


AN I8H MAE LTTE. 


inotlier declared when the old cnr6 complained of this lapse into 
ignoble habits. He lived the best part of his life out of doors, and 
came home at all hours, his clothes bespattered, his boots coated an 
inch thick with mud. He was never in a condition to appear in 
drawing-room or dining-room. “And he has no more manners 
than one of those horrid cows which I am always meeting in your 
detestable muddy lanes.” 

The cure sighed and shrugged his shoulders. He had no faith in 
a woman who could let her husband’s only son eat with the ser- 
vants, and who did not love the cows and the deep rustic lanes of 
that romantic land. He took an early occasion to remonstrate with 
the father. But here he met sterner treatment. The count looked 
black as thunder at the mention of his son’s name. 

“The boy is a born vagabond, a young savage, whom even my 
wife has failed in taming,” he said harshly. “Let him go his own 
way.” 

“ Do you think Madame la Comtesse understands the boy, or has 
really tried to tame him ? ” asked the priest. ‘ ‘ I find him gentle 
enough.” 

M. Caradec smiled with his haughty, self-complacent air. The 
cure was too near the peasant class himself to be over-critical in 
matters of refinement. 

“My dear Father Bressant, if you like the boy, so much the 
better,” he answered. “ Let him have his own way and live among 
the people he likes. I suppose he will be a soldier in a year or two, 
and the discipline of a barrack will take off his rough edges.” 

This speech, faithfully interpreted, meant that Count Caradec 
cared very little what became of his eldest son, so that he and his 
fragile wife were not plagued about him, Adele had been married 
five years, and had borne her husband two sons ; and she had been 
moi-e or less an invalid during the whole period of her wedded life. 
There w^as nothing specific the matter with her. She had consulted 
learned physicians at Eennes and Paris. She had the frequent at- 
tendance of a family doctor from Avranches. Her malady was 
nameless. The faculty proclaimed her organically sound, heart ex- 
cellent, lungs all that could be desired, liver conscientious in the 
performance of all its functions. Her only complaint was to fancy 
herself always ill. “ Madame s’ecoute troiV' the Avranches doctor 
said. She was perpetually feeling throbbings and flutterings, sink- 
ings and tremblings. Finding herself sole mistress of a fine old 
chateau in a solitary land, with twice too many servants and a de- 
voted husband, the elegant AdcTe had taken to hypochondria as the 
only amusement possible in such a situation. She wore elegant 
morning gowns and lolled on a sofa all day. Sim trained her hus- 
band to wait upon her, to fly for her smelling-bottle, to spend a con- 
siderable portion of his life carrying fans and footstools, down ])il- 
lows for the aching head, medicine bottles and glass measures. She 
was Virtue’s self, a wife without a flaw ; but she was not the pleas- 
antest partner a man could have had. She was never out of temper, 
but she was often so ill that she must not be spoken to ; her nerves 
were sometimes so highly strung that a stiq) upon the parqueted 


25 


AN miMAELITE. 

floor caused her exquisite agonies. It was not to be supposed that 
such a sensitive creature could endure the qwesence of a hulking 
step-son, smelling of badgers and other noisome beasts. 

To hear Adele discourse to Jier chosen friends upon the pains and 
perils of maternity made it seem a miracle that the world had ever 
been peopled. 

“ But then I am such a fragile creature,” she added, deprecat- 
ingiy ; “you might blow me away with a breath.” 

She was much too fragile to nurse her boys, or to perform any of 
those little services for them which are the delight of ordinary 
mothers. Mine. Lanion sent her a nurse who had nursed the infant 
of a duchesse. No rough peasant woman of the district must be 
allowed to be foster-mother to Adele’s oftspring, lest they should 
grow uj) as coarse and common as their half-brother. The Parisian 
nurse was a fine lady, and gave herself intolerable airs in the Pen- 
Hoel kitchen, and talked of the Faubourg — meaning St. Germain — 
as if there were no other quarter in Paris. Eaymond Caradec saw 
all the arrangements of his home altered, his expenses nearly doubled 
by the more elegant manner of life which his wife insisted upon ; 
but he made no complaint. He worshipped Adele for those qualities 
which made her unlike the woman who had betrayed him. He ac- 
cepted his life as she chose to make it, indulged her morbid, selfish 
fancies, idolized the children she had brought him, and was in all 
things admirable except in his neglect of Sebastian. 

The time had come when his son felt that neglect in all its bitter- 
ness. The wild, free life, the woods, the sands and rocks and sea, 
the peasantry, the priests, the custom-house officers, had lost none 
of their delight. He had no wish to be the pampered inmate of a 
drawing-room — to sit by a wood fire reading a novel, or to listen to 
Mme. Caradec’s rare performances upon the harp. He wanted none 
of the indulgences or luxuries of a rich man’s son. But he yearned 
I)assionately for a father’s love. He wanted his rightful place at his 
father’s side. He asked himself bitterly what sin he had committed 
to justify a father’s contempt. 

He had the pride of his race, the offended pride of one who has 
done no wrong and who feels the sting of injustice. He could not 
fawn or flatter. He waited, with a kmd of dogged patience, for the 
day when his father should awaken to the knowledge of the m'ong 
he had done his son and of his own accord should seek to make 
atonement. 

While he was waiting in this spirit, half patient, half sullen, a 
catastrophe occurred which shipwrecked all his hopes find made the 
breach between father and son impassable. 

The four-year-old boy and his three-year-old brother adored Sebas- 
tian. It w’as a horrible fact, the cruelest turn which fate could have 
played Mme. Caradec ; but this evil thing had come to pass. Her 
sons were ever so much fonder of their step-brother than of her. 
Vain that she clad them in velvet and lace and set them to play with 
ivory letters on the Aubusson carpet. They scampered off to the 
stables at the first o])portunity, played havoc with velvet frocks and 
lace frills, and came back smelling of badger. Vain that she forbade 


26 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


donkeys and ponies as dangerous, denounced ladders and liaylofts as 
ungentlemanlike. They rode barebacked at three years old, and 
were always climbing ladders when they were not climbing trees. 
The invalid mother seldom left her bedroom till noon, and rarely left 
her sofa in the drawing-room except to go back to her bed-chamber 
at night. The Farisiau dry nurse, who had succeeded to Parisian 
wet nurses, was much too fine and much too lazy to run after her 
charges ; so the boys did as they liked, and their liking was to be 
with Sebastian, who returned their love in liberal measure. He 
made them fishing-rods, being marvellously expert in all mechanical 
arts, and they went on long expeditions with him and came back 
with laden baskets, wdiich they fondly believed they had helped to 
fill. They were his companions in all his occupations, loved to 
stand at his knees when he was at work at any of those constructions 
in the way of dove-cot:?, rabbit-hutches, tumbrils, bird-traps, for 
which, in the opinion of the peasantry, he had a heaven-given gen- 
ius. He built a windmill for one cottager, who had been saving up 
the necessary timber for many years, and who had grown too old and 
feeble for that great work in the meanwhile. His popularity was 
doubled by the achievement, and Raymond Caradec heard his eldest 
son’s praises from every •\fillager with whom he condescended to 
converse. But those were not many, as the lord of the soil held 
himself mostly aloof from his serfs. 

Mine. Caradec gave way to much feeble and fretful lamentations 
upon the half-brother’s evil influence upon her sons. They would 
grow rude and look like Sebastian — mere village boors like their 
brother. 

“ You see so little of Sebastian that you can hardly know whether 
he is rude or courteous,” answered Caradec, stung by these i^eevish 
complaints. 

At the cruel answer, Adele melted into tears and sunk back almost 
fainting among her down pillow’s. She w’as not made to endure un- 
kindness from one she loved ; she might be as cruel as she chose to 
other people, but breathe one harsh w’ord and she drooped and lan- 
guished like a delicate flower bending before hurtling winds ; and 
Raymond Caradec, being stern truthfulness itself, w’as the perpetual 
%dctim of these small hyi^ocrisies and always ready to apologize for 
a rough word. His w’eak, selfish wufe had boundless powder over 
him. In vain did he argue w’itli himself that his eldest son was not 
altogether fairly treated, that there were faults on both sides. A 
few tears, a little plaintive look from the fair young wufe quashed all 
his objections. 

“ You are not always here — you do not see ” — she murmured sig- 
nificantly, and on the strength of such vague hints Raymond grew 
to believe that his son was brutal to the invalid step-mother when- 
ever he, the master, was out of the way. 


J N ISIIMA ELITE. 


27 


CHAPTER IV. 

THE FUKNACE FOE GOLD. 

Thus it came about that although the little brothers thrived and 
grew rosy in their companionship with the tall, dark lad, Raymond 
Caradec was willing to admit that Sebastian’s society was dangerous 
to the children, and when, one autumn afternoon toward dusk, he 
found his wife in tears on account of the jDrolonged absence of her 
babies, he was quite ready to be angry with his eldest son as the 
cause of those tears. 

‘ ‘ Sebastian took them out directly after breakfast, although Marie 
told him the morning was too cold for them,” whimpered Ad^le. 

“ Cold ! Why, my child, the weather is lovely.” 

“I only know that I have been shivering all the afternoon,” an- 
swered his wife, leaning out of her easy-chair to spread her thin 
white hands above the wood fire. “ But, cold or not, Sebastian has 
kept those dear children out all day, and no one knows where he has 
taken them or what he has done with them.” 

Here she broke down altogether and sobbed hysterically, as if it 
were as likely as not that Sebastian had gone far afield on purpose to 
lose the little ones in a wood. It was the season of fallen leaves and 
robin redbreasts. 

“My cherished one, pray don’t distress yourself,” implored Cara- 
dec, bending over his wife’s chair. “I have no doubt the boys are 
amusing themselves in the village or in some orchard within half a 
mile.” 

“They are not to be found within miles. I have sent all about 
the country in search of them — men on horseback. It seems that 
Sebastian harnessed the two donkeys to the little cart, and took a 
basket of provisions from the kitchen, and a bottle of wine and 
cloaks and things, just as if he were running away with my darlings 
— never, never, never to see their mother’s face again.” More sobs, 
with increasing symptoms of hysteria, and hysteria with Madame 
Caradec was an awful thing — a thing to be dreaded by all about her. 

“He has taken the boys for a picnic, of course,” said Caradec, 
when he had soothed his wife into brief tranquillity. “It is not the 
first time he has taken the cart.” 

“A picnic in such weather— nearly the end of October! ” gasped 
Ad(5le ; “and they tell me he took wood and matches, as if to light a 
fire. He is the very spirit of mischief.” 

More followed to the same tune in the deepening dusk._ Matters 
grew w^orse when the lamps were lighted ; and as the night grew 
late Raymond himself grew seriously alarmed. Scouts were sent in 
every direction ; but it was not till the late autumn dawn that the 
sleei:)less household were in anywise enlightened as to the fate of the 
three boys. At that bleak hour one of the mounted gamekeepers 
came back with the news that the little donkey-cart had been seen 
crossing the sands to Mont St. Michel early in the afternoon of the 


28 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


previous day. The boys had doubtless slept at the little inn witliin 
the fortress walls. The tide was full when the gamekeeper received 
this information, and instead of crossing to the rock in a boat to 
follow up the trail, he deemed it his duty to return and tell his mas- 
ter what he had heard. 

Madame Caradec had been hysterical all night. Nurse and lady’s 
maid had had their hands full in attending upon her ; but she grew 
worse on hearing that the cart had been seen on those perilous 
sands. Her darlings had been swallowed alive in a quicksand. It 
was a hideous vengeance of Sebastian’s. He was jealous of her 
children. He hated her. He was just the kind of a boy to commit 
murder and suicide. He had it all in his face. 

Raymond Caradec ordered his horse and rode off to the mount, 
galloping across the low level fields beyond Pontorson, past the 
wagons laden with sand from the spongy shores of the Couesnon, 
and picking his way over the sandy fiats, out of which the rock rose 
like an Egyptian iwramid. There was no causeway between solid 
earth and the mount in those days. The citadel stood solitary, 
aloof, girt by blue waves or shining sand. At this time in the morn- 
ing tlie tide was going out, and Raymond’s keen gaze explored the 
sandy flat, from which the waves were slowly crawling, in search of 
the little donkey-cart with the three boys. If they had been pris- 
oners at the mount last night, overtaken by the tide, they ought to 
be on their way home now. 

There was no sign of the cart on the sands, but M. Caradec found 
it in the inn yard, and the donkeys in the inn stables. The boys had 
arrived there at two o’clock yesterday, had explored the monastery 
and little town, and had picnicked on the sands. They had been 
seen making their wood fire and boiling their coffee while the tide 
was still far out, and this was the last anybody had heard or seen of 
them. And now it was time for Raymond Caradec’s heart to sink 
and grow cold with an awful fear. Of all places on this earth that 
he knew, there was no spot more dangerous to the rash or inexpe- 
rienced rover than this sandy waste around St. Michel. Not a year 
passed but the sea had its victim in some imprudent traveller ; and 
now his little children, the fair-haired babies he loved, had been de- 
voured by that murderous sea. Of the eldest one he thought with 
only anger — bitter rage against the boy whose crime or whose folly 
had sacrificed the children he loved. 

He talked to a dozen natives of the rock, who all told him the 
same story. The boys had been seen in the street, on the ramparts, 
and at the inn ; but after four o’clock, when they picnicked on the 
sands, no mortal eye among the dwellers at Mont St. Michel had 
beheld them. They w^ere to come back for the donkey-cart ; but 
cart and donkeys were there to show' that the tall youth and his 
little brothers had not returned. The natives shrugged their shoul- 
ders and evidently apprehended the worst. It was a sad story. 
The lad was so good to his little brothers. He carried the youngest 
on his shoulder across the sands, a rosy-cheeked clierub, with golden 
curls flying in the wind. Those terrible Uses ! It W'as not the first 
time. 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


2V) 

Eaymond Caradoc turned from them with a face wdiite as death. 
He guided his horse out of the inn yard and through the citadel gate 
mechanically. Whither was he to go next, or what was he to do ? 
He knew not ; but with a vague notion of doing something, he rode 
slowly on to the sands, as if to seek the particular spot wdiich liad 
engulfed his children. He knew not if they had been swallowed by 
one of those (picksands, the Uses, as the natives called them, which 
abound on this level waste, or overtaken and surrounded by the sea. 
A barefooted peasant, a man wdio earned his living in the" summer- 
time as a g-uide to travellers, and starved and idled in the winter, ran 
after the horseman. 

“ Sir,” he said, “ there is Tombelaine. The la<l and his brothers 
might have gone there.” 

“ Not likely ; but there is just a chance.” 

Tombelaine is the twin islet which rises a little way from the 
mount— a barren rock — the resort only of fishermen and the ]-are 
smugglers who attempt the perils of this most unpropitious shore. 
Tombelaine ? Yes, the rock rose yonder to the right, its base still 
washed by the tide. Eaymond spurred his horse to a gallop, with 
his face toward that barren isle. The man rushed after him, shout- 
ing to him at the top of his voice to beware of the lises, to take the 
sand where it was hard and wrinkled ; to avoid the soft ground at 
the peril of his life. The count neither heard nor heeded, but gal- 
loped on toward the rock. Providence was kind to him, as to 
dmnken men in their peril. The weaves washed against his stout 
charger’s breast as he stood close beside the rock. Thank God ! His 
call was answered by his eldest boy’s deep baritone, and by two little 
l^iping voices like the treble cry of the sea-gulls. 

They were alive. They stood shivering on the rock waiting for 
the tide to go down. They were very cold, those two little ones, 
and oh, so hungry. The father took them from their brother’s 
arms without a word, and clasped them to his breast ; there, with 
the water dashing about his horse’s flanks and the salt sea mnd 
blowing over him. He rode olf with his children, hugging them, 
sheltering them with his strong right arm as they squatted in front 
of his saddle, and guiding his horse with his left hand. This time 
he took heed of the guide’s warning. He walked llis horse sloAvly, 
picking his way across the flat, choosing the long stretches of sand 
upon which the waves had left their print, crossing the river at a 
spot where the footsteps of the fishermen who had passed but a little 
while before served as a guide. Of the other sou left behind on the 
rock he was hardly conscious. He did not draw rein till he was in 
front of the chateau of Pen-Hoel, where Adele was standing watch- 
ing for his return — a fragile figure robed in w’hite and wrapped in 
the Indian shawl that had been his wedding gift. 

Never had he been so completely her slave as in this moment, 
when, in her joy at seeing her children, she flung her arms about 
her husband’s neck and kissed him and blessed him with an impas- 
sioned affection which she had never given him until to-day. They 
all went off to the salon together, and mother and father sat in front 
of the wood fire, warming, comforting, and feeding the cold, hungry 


30 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


cliildren. Then, when the treasures of a foolish mother’s love had 
been poured out upon the restored children, came the bitterness of 
a weak woman’s hate and jealousy for the eldest son. Why had ho 
done this thing ? Why had he exposed her darlings to the perils of 
cold, sickness, death — kei^t them starving all night upon a bleak, un- 
sheltered rock ? Why, except to torment and torture her, whom he 
had always hated, of whom he had always been wickedly jealous ? 

“ I have not forgotten the look he gave me when first I came 
here.” 

The stepson came into the room while the stej)mother was bewail- 
ing his wickedness. Pale, haggard, with wild eyes and disordered 
apparel, he stood before his father. 

“ Sebastian, you have given my wife and me a night of agony,” 
said Kaymond Caradec. “ What in the name of all tliat is evil was 
your motive for endangering the lives of those children ? ” 

“If their lives were in danger, mine could not be particularly 
safe,” answered the young man bitterly. 

He felt the slight implied in his father’s speech. His own peril 
was ignored ; he counted for nothing. 

“ If my brothers had perished, I must have perished with them,” 
he said. “ You don’t suppose I took them to that rock with the in- 
tention of passing the night there ? ” 

“ But I believe you did,” cried Adele, pale with passion ; “ I be- 
lieve you capable of any wickedness against me and mine. You 
would have left my innocents there to be drowned, while you got 
away in a boat to Jersey or somewhere ; only your villainous scheme 
failed, thank God ! ” 

“Father,” exclaimed Sebastian, with his eyes aflame, “do you 
believe this infamy of your son ? ” 

“ I believe nothing. I understand nothing, upon my soul. I 
don’t know whether to think you a villain or a fool. I know wdiat 
your mother was, and that the blood in your veins is bad enough.” 

“ Stop ! ” cried Sebastian, with a voice wdiose indignant power 
quelled even an angry father, “ Not a word about my mother. She 
is in her grave, and God is the only judge who shall pass sentence 
on her sins. We have been living very unliappily in this house for 
a long time. I have been in everybody’s way. I am an outcast in 
my father’s house, as Ishmael w-as in the house of Abiuham — al- 
though, heaven knows, I never mocked at my stepmother — and I 
should be liappier and better in the wilderness of the outside world, 
I should liave turned my back upon Pen-Hoel before now if it w^ere 
not for my little brothers, wlio love me.” 

His proud young face softened as he turned to the little ones. 
They were looking on with eyes that had grown large with w’onder, 
listening to every word, but understanding very little, only scared 
bv a vague sense of unhappiness, the panic of an atmosphere, charged 
with all bad feelings. 

At the w^ord “ love ” from the elder brother’s lips, the childish 
faces flushed^ and the eyes of the youngest brimmed over. 

“Y"es, yes, Sebastian, we both love you.” 

“ As for yesterday’s business, it wus an accident which might have 


AN milMAELITE. 


31 


happened to any one. We had our picnic on the sands, and were 
turning to go back to the mount, when Frederic saw Tombelaine 
and asked me to take him and his brother there — was it not so 
child ? ” 

“ Yes, yes,” ansTrered Frederic, the elder boy. 

“At first I refused, for the tide was rising and there was not much 
time for exploring the rock, but they both begged me. So we ran 
to the Tombelaine, and the children went scrambling over the islet 
until they found a sea-gnlTs nest, and when they were tired of look- 
ing at the nest and birds they made me take them into the cavern, 
and while we were groping about in the dark and playing hide and 
seek 

“I wasn’t frightened, was I?” cried Louis, the younger boy, 
“ though it was so dark. Frederic was, though.” 

“ While we were at play the tide was rising, and when we came out 
of the cave the rock was hemmed round with water — no escape except 
by a boat. It was growing dark, too, though it was not six o’clock, 
and a mist was rising. I shouted and shouted as long as I had any 
strength left, shouted at intervals of a few minutes until it was pitch 
dark, and then— well, my poor little pets were cold and hungry — 
we had left oui' basket with the remains of our dinner within reach 
of the tide. I had not so much as a bit of bread to give them. We 
crept into the cave and I held them in my arms all night and tried 
to keep them warm, and I sang to them and told them stories, and 
they managed to sleep a good deal in spite of the cold, and we heard 
the wind roaring and the waves sobbing. It was the middle of the 
night and there w^as a thick white fog over sea and land. I knew 
the danger of attempting to cross the sands in such a fog, so I waited 
until morning, though it was a weary thing to sit there and hear 
the waters slowly creeping round us again in the winter dawn. The 
tide had not turned when you rode out to us,” he concluded, ad- 
dressing his father. 

He had never taken liis eyes from his father’s face while he told 
his story. Not once had he glanced at his step-mother. He treated 
Madame Caradec and her accusations with scathing indifference. 

But Raymond had not been unmindful of his wife while his son 
was speaking. He had noted her sighs and stifled sobs, her wTith- 
ings of silent agony, her clutches at her children, clasping them to 
her breast commlsively as if to save them from a human tiger ; and 
he knew that if he forgave his son too readily for the folly that had 
<*ost a night of agony he would be made to rue his indulgence. 
Hereafter he would be told that he had no real love for his wife or 
her children, that the son of his dead and gone Hagar was more to 
him than the sons of the spotless Sarah. 

The strong man was so completely under the dominion of the 
weak woman that in this crisis of his life Raymond Caradec thought 
not of wdiat was just and right, but only of how he must needs act 
to save his wife’s tears, to heal lier wounded feelings. She had flung 
her arms around his neck an hour ago, in the hysterical joy of her 
sons’ return, and had laid her pale, fair cheek against his as she had 
done but a few times in their wedded life ; and his whole l)eing was 


AN milMAELITE. 




moved by the tenderness that little gnsh of love had awakened. It 
was of her, and her only, he thought as he tnrned coldly from his 
first-born. 

“It was a foolish business, and yon have given us an infinity of 
trouble,” he said. 

Sebastian took up his hat and left the room without a word. His 
teeth were chattering, his lips were blue, his limbs ached from the 
constrained position in which he had sat half the night through. 
Nobody had offered to chafe his hands and feet before the wood fire 
yonder, or to administer wine a la frangaise and warm food. The 
little children had been fed and comforted with luxurious fare, and 
had basked in their mother’s lap before the merrily blazing logs ; 
but for this first-born — this Ishmael — well, there was the kitchen 
hearth, wider and warmer even than that of the salon, and as much 
food and wine as he could want. He had but to ask for it. There 
was all the difference. On one side, mother and father caressing, 
devouring their children with kisses; on the other, there was the 
kitchen and the old servants, rough peasants for the most part, 
who could neither read nor write, but who were devoted to Sebas- 
tian, 

Sebastian did not go to the kitchen for warmth and food. He 
went out of his father’s house cold and hungry, as he had entered it. 
He shook the dust of Pen-Hoel off his feet. “C’est fini, ca,” he said 
to himself. “ Va pour le desert.” 

The wilderness he thought of, as he walked downhill to the bridge 
that spanned the moat, was that great wilderness of which he had 
known something in his childhood — that stony-hearted step-mother, 
Paris, who could be hardly harsher to him than the fair-faced, fragile 
being who had sobbed and sighed him out of his father’s house and 
his father’s love. Yes, he would go back to Paris and work for his 
bread — work among common laborers if need were, and eat dry 
bread and drink sour wine ; but the bread and wine should be of his 
own earning. By the sweat of his brow w^ould he live, as his father 
Adam lived before him, by the work of his own strong arms and dex- 
terous hands, rather than be a debtor for the decencies and luxuries 
of a gentleman’s life to those wdio loved him not. 

He walked quickly down the chestnut avenue, his heart beating 
lond with anger and wounded love ; but when he had crossed the 
old Norman bridge under the portcullis he slackened his steps and 
began to think more deliberately of his position. He explored his 
pockets, and found his whole stock of worldly wealth represented 
by a franc^ and a half— not a large amount with which to begin the 
battle of life. He was prepared to walk to Paris ; but he knew that 
he must eat on the way there, and to eat he must have money. He 
could live on the humblest fare, sleep in the humblest shelter that 
offered itself ; but even for black bread and a pallet under a peas- 
ant’s thatch he must have money. 

Father Bressant was the only man to whom he cared to apply in 
his need, and the village priest was not so rich as a village innkeeper 
or a peasant who had saved money ; but he knew that the good 
father loved him, and would trust him, and that he had been for a 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


33 


long time seWetly indignant at the scurvy treatment his pupil re- 
ceived from father and step-mother. 

Sebastian went straight to the presbytery and told the priest his 
story, unreservedly. The time had come at which he must leave 
his father’s house. There had been no quaiTel — he had used no 
hard words to his father or his father’s wife ; but there was bad 
blood between them, and it was best for all that he should go. 

Father Bressant argued against this decision. It was a sin for a 
son to desert his father’s house — to take upon himself to choose a 
life below his rank in the world, 

“It is the life to which my father has degraded me,” answered 
the young man. “ He has let me eat and drink with his servants ; 
he has left me dependent upon servants for kindness. You know 
what kind of home I have had up yonder. Can you ask me to go 
back to it ? ” 

The 2')riest could and did so ask him, considering it liis priestly 
duty ; but when he found that the lad’s will was iron in this matter, 
that he would go to Paris if he starved and begged uj^on the way — • 
if he aiTived there famished, and with bare, bleeding feet, the kind 
old man opened his purse, and gave all its contents to his i^ujjil — a 
sum of nine and a half louis. He forced the whole amount iqion 
Sebastian, who declared that a quarter of it would be enough. 

“You don't know how long it may be before you get work in 
Paris,” he said. “Food and fuel are dear there; you will find it 
difficult to live. Wliy not try St. Malo or Eennes ? ” 

“ Too near home ; too cramj)ed and narrow,” answered Sebastian. 
“ I want to be lost in a great crowd ; forgotten in the wilderness of 
workingmen until I can make myself beloved and resjjected for my 
own sake. You know that though I am no Solomon I am pretty 
clever with my hands. I can use a caiq^enter’s tools or a mason’s 
hammer. I shall get work in Paris, you may be sure, and shall 
learn more there in a week than I could learn in a year at Pen- 
Hoel. I shall disgrace nobody, I shall vex nobody, I shall be in no 
one’s way. They set me down as a boor, an ignoramus, up yonder, 
Father Bressant,” with a jerk of his head in the direction of Pen- 
Hoel, “ because I have kef)t company with gamekeepers and fisher- 
men, having no other company offered me, mark you ; but I feel 
that it is in me to be of some use in the world ; and I would rather 
dig for sand on the shores of the Couesnon than lead the life I am 
leading now.” 

“ If you go to Paris you will fall in with Eepublicans and Free- 
thinkers ; you will forget your God,” sighed the 2:)riest. 

“ I think not, father. My belief in the God of truth and justice, 
of mercy and love, lies pretty deei-) in my heart. That faith lias 
comforted me often wlien life went hard with me. I don’t think it 
will be plucked out by the first bad com]Dany I may fall among. I 
have heard men sneer at all those tilings you have taught me before 
to-day, and have let their words go by me like the wind. I am not 
"'fraid of what Paris can do to me.” 

Father Bressant sighed again and shook his head dolorously. He 
was an old man, a believer in Papal supremacy and the elder Bour- 


34 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


bons. He hated Republicans and Bonapartists. And Paris was 
just now a divided camp, occuiried by these two heresies, the Red 
Republicanism of Louis Blanc and Chan gamier, the masked Impe- 
rialism of the President. 

The priest gave Sebastian a kind of testimonial, or certificate of 
identity and good character, which might serve him in default of 
other papers wLen he went in search of employment ; and then the 
two, master and pupil, walked together for a mile or so on the first 
stage of the young man’s journey, and then they parted with eyes 
not innocent of tears. The outcast stood on a little knoll beside the 
road, looking back at the kind old man’s bent shoulders and white 
hair falling upon his rusty black cassock. Sebastian watched the 
stooping figure until it vanished in the perspective of tangled bram- 
ble and chestnut and ash, as the parallel lines of higli unshorn 
hedges melted into one. Never till this moment had it occurred to 
him what an old man his tutor was. Should they two ever meet 
again ? he wondered. He must work his hardest and make haste to 
restore the money boiTowed to-day, lest the good old priest’s declin- 
ing days should be made harder for the lack of that little store. He 
must be sparing, too, and live on bread and water rather than im- 
pose upon his old friend’s generosity. 

Having this in mind, he denied himself the indulgence of the 
diligence, when, on inquiring at Avranches, he discovered that the 
journey to Paris would cost him something over three louis. The 
autumnal weather was capital for walking — albeit the shortness of 
the late October days was an inconvenience ; but Sebastian was fear- 
less and hardy, and was used to roaming after nightfall. He tramped 
somewhat wearily into the narrow streets of Villedieu, luminous 
with its furnaces and copper-mills, when the church clock was 
chiming the first quarter after ten, looking about him for a shelter 
which should be cheap and decent. It was nearly eleven before he 
found such a lodging, but later, as he advanced upon his journey, 
from Villedieu to Thorigny and the wooded heart of Normandy, 
called the Bocage, thence to Caen, from Caen to Lisieux and 
Evreux, he grew cleverer in finding quarters for the night, and con- 
trived to spend veiy little of Father Bressant’s money ; and he had 
only spent five and twenty francs in all when he entered the great 
city in the wintry twilight, friendless, houseless, unkaowm, but his 
own master and possessed of the infinite riches of youth and hope. 


CHAPTER V. 

“sweet to the soul, and health to the bones.” 

Raymond Caradec’s runaway son stood in the midst of the great 
city, where the river runs between the old Palace of the Medicis and 
the new Palace of the Legislature, spanned by historic bridges, 
darkened by the shadows of historic towers ; a river whose waters, 
lapping against the granite quay with a little babbling sound like 


AW I8HMAELITE. 


35 


the prattle of a child, could tell of tragedy and comedy, death, sin, 
vice, hate, love, mirth, woe, \vere it a little more articulate ; a river 
which, to the mind of the man who knows Paris, does recall a world 
of strange and terrible memories ; a river which has run red with 
blood in its day. On that fatal vigil of St. Bartholomew’, for ex- 
ample, when the streets w’ere heajied with Huguenot corpses, and 
King Charles’ cut-throats held their obscene orgies amid the slain, 
what time the king himself looked out of his window in the Louvre 
yonder, arquebus levelled, animating the butchery with his shouts, 
shooting at the fugitives trying to swim the stream. The river will 
be flecked with sanguine stains once again, before he wdio looks 
across the water to-night in this October of 1850 is much older. 

To the young man from the green hillside yonder across the 
Cousenon Paris to-night seemed altogether a strange city. He had 
never taken kindly to the long, narrow streets of tall houses or even 
to the glittering boulevard, w’ith its formal avenue of young trees. 
But he had come to Paris for a purpose, come to win his independ- 
ence, to earn freedom, fearlessness, and the right to hope. He had 
fed for the last year or so upon stories of men wdio had entered 
Paris shoeless, shirtless, carrying a few rags in an old cotton hand- 
kerchief, a few sous for total reserve fund against starvation, and 
who years afterward had become men of mark, a power in the city. 
He came stuffed to the brim wdth ambition, believing in himself, 
without conceit or arrogance, with that unquestionable faith in his 
own force and his own capacity which cannot be plucked from tlie 
breast of the man foredoomed to be victor in the world’s strife. 

One wdio has studied the philosophy of Bohemianism has said 
that from the hour in which the penniless man leaves off trying to get 
w’ork and sits down in his hunger and his shabbiness, that man is 
lost. And in every great city there are two classes of men, the 
workers and the loungers ; the latter with a natural bent toward the 
gutter, and the former brave, patient, heroic, and bound to win. 
The idle talks of bad luck. “ Pas de chance ” is his favorite motto. 
The worker seizes the twin demons of poverty and obscurity as the 
infant Hercules throttled the snakes that beset his cradle. The 
struggle may be long and weary. Life is a waiting race in which 
the best horse is bound to win. 

And now night was closing in, and the traveller had to find him- 
self shelter before the police grew troublesome. He was travel- 
ling at a disadvantage, without papers save that certificate of the par- 
ish priest’s ; and he had been sharply interrogated an hour ago at 
the Octroi. He remembered the names of two spots in Paris — the 
theatre at which his mother acted and the Rue de Shelas, the dreaiy 
street of tall, stone barrack-like houses, a new street beyond the 
Rue Poissoniiiere, where his mother had died. He hated the street 
with a deadly hatred, and yet to-night, friendless and alone, he 
turned his face automatically toward the last home he had known in 
Paris. 

The Rue de Shelas seemed at the other end of the world to this 
tired wanderer, who had tramped so many weary miles under good 
and evil weather within the last week. He had made this last day’s 


36 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


march longer than that of any previous day, and he was thoroughly 
beaten. He had bought himself a blouse and a colored shii*t at 
Caen, and his coat and fine linen were tied in a little bundle slung 
across his shoulder. He was clad as workingmen are clad, yet he 
did not look like a workman, and the blouses he met on his way 
glanced at him suspiciously, as at a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He 
left the glitter and dazzle of the lighted boulevard as soon as he 
could, and plunged into the labyrinth of murky streets through 
which the everlasting Rue de Lafayette now pierces, a direct avenue 
from wealth to j^overty, from idleness to labor, from the gommeux 
to the blouse. It was long before Sebastian turned into the well- 
remembered street, which stood upon the verge of civilization in 
those days — dreary waste places and houses newly begun surround- 
ing it on all sides. 

It was only eight years since Sebastian had looked his last uiDon 
that sordid quarter from the fly in which he sat, timid, unquestion- 
ing, at his father’s side. And yet he had an idea that everybody he 
had known in that period of his existence would be dead and buried. 
He expected to find old landmarks swept away. The early years of 
life are so long, heart and brain so ardent, outpacing Time the plod- 
der, who becomes Time the galloper in after years. The street was 
there ; the house was there. Sebastian remembered the number — a 
big black figure of seven painted upon each side of the door. He 
looked up at the front of the house and it seemed to him like the 
Tower of Babel — windows above windows, lighted and dark, cur- 
tained, uncurtained. The house w’as there, but the people he had 
'known were dead, most likely — dead or gone away. He rang the 
bell and the door -was opened by some invisible means, whereupon 
he entered and beheld a short, middle-aged, slatternly woman sit- 
ting at a table in a little room on the left of the stone passage. It 
was exactly the same figure he used to see there in days gone by — • 
the same face — not older by an hour, it seemed to him- -the greasy 
black gown, the large sallow face surmounted by a red cotton ker- 
chief arranged as a cap, the long brass earrings. It was the same 
fat Jewess who had kept the house and tyrannized over the lodgers. 
But although Sebastian remembered Mine. Rigol, the portress, °that 
substantial matron had utterly forgotten him. The gamin of eleven, 
too frail and small for his years, had developed into the broad- 
shouldered youth of nineteen, six feet high and with the limbs and 
carriage of an athlete. 

“ Can I have a room here?” the young man asked ; whereupon 
Mine. Rigol, as in duty bound, took out a greasy ledger, and put 
the stranger through a kind of catechism, before she would allov/ 
him the privilege of admission to tliat stony paradise. 

He answered the questions exactly as he liked, drawing freelv up- 
on his imagination, and Mme. Rigol put down what he told her in a, 
purely mechanical way. His name? Ishmael. Christian name? 
Ishmael also. Curious ! but Mme. Rigol was used to queer names 
in that greasy register, and she put down “ Ishmael Ishmael ” with- 
out a word. When it came to a question of papers, she put “ S. P.” 
(sans papiers), and the business was settled. But her face and man- 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


37 


ner became keen and eager when she asked him for a month’s rent, 
eighteen francs, in advance ; and this given, she was perfectly satis- 
fied. 

She took a particular key from a board adorned with almost as 
many keys as a pianoforte, and went panting up the high stone 
staircase to show the new lodger to his room. The odors upon that 
greasy stair were almost unendurable to the young man, whose nos- 
trils still remembered the fresh sweet air of fields and hedge-rows, 
the salt breath of the sea. He felt that life must be terrible in such 
a den. But he need come there only for the night’s rest, he argued 
with himself. He would have the whole of Paris for his dwelling'- 
place by day. A man must have a shelter, were it never so bad. 
And he had made up his mind to be sparing of good Pather Bres- 
sant’s cash. Poverty must not be over-nice. 

Mine. Eigol panted on, getting more asthmatical with every stair, 
till she opened a door on the fifth stoiy, and ushered the new lodger 
into a bare little whitewashed den, with an old wooden bedstead 
and the sparsest provision in the way of furniture. But there was a 
stove, on which the portress put some stress, as indicating an excess 
of luxury, and there was a window through which the wintry stars 
were shining. The room had not been occupied for some time, and 
felt cold and damp ; but there were no foul smells here, and Mme. 
Rigol volunteered to light a fire for the traveller, and even to make 
him some coffee. The lad’s handsome face and free, frank manner 
made her kindly disposed to him. Slie went down-stairs to fetch 
materials for fire and coffee, while Sebastian surveyed the dark out- 
side world from the window. 

Lamps glimmered here and there in the darkness below. He saw 
the outer boulevard yonder — a long gray line — and beyond that 
a dreary borderland of waste and squalor, which, in those days, 
stretched between the outskirts of the town and the fortifications — 
that masterwork of the Citizen King’s reign. It was a dismal end 
of the town. Yonder, folded in the shadows of night, lay the ceme- 
tery of Montmartre. Sebastian could only distinguish the spot afar 
off, by the darkness which brooded over the place of graves. She 
was lying under those shadows — that unhappy mother, the sinner, 
lost on earth, to be redeemed, he hoped, in heaven, for if a future 
state be needed for the good, how much more for the sinners ; not for 
their punishment, but for their reclamation. Sebastian thought of 
his dead mother to-night with intense sadness. She had sinned ; 
she had outraged her husband — the common law of morality. Yet, 
in her first fall, might there not have been some blame due else- 
where ? His father was a hard man. There were times when Sebas- 
tian had told himself that the master of Pen-Hoel had a stone instead 
of a heart. He was tender enough, nevertheless, to the weak, self- 
indulgent second wife. He had grown senile in middle age, a slave 
of a selfish woman’s feeble prettiness. 

Mine. Rigol came in presently, puffing like a steam engine, but 
beaming with good nature. She was of the college bedmaker’s 
temper, and liked a young bachelor, for whom she could perforin 
those small services which are rarely unremunerative. She explained 


38 


AN miMAELITE. 


to Sebastian, as she lighted the fire and brewed the coffee, that any 
services she rendered him in this way would be a question apart. 
The rent was paid to the landlord ; that was a fixed sum ; no profit 
accrued to her therefrom. But if it were in arrear, by all the sacred 
names in the calendar, was not she (Mine. Eigol) made to suffer? 
As a stranger in Paris, perhaps monsieur would like her to provide 
his breakfast every morning. It would be but a matter of a few 
sous. 

Sebastian thanked her, but declined the favor. 

, “I shall have to live as other workmen live,” he said, ‘’ and I 
must go out at daybreak. I shall breakfast anyhow — anywhere.” 

She asked him what his trade was. • 

“ A mason,” he answered boldly. 

“ Monsieur is a gacheur — a garcon, perhaps ; he is too young, 
surely, to be a limousinant,” ejaculated madam, scrutinizing him 
sharply. 

His hands were bronzed and roughened by an out-door life, broad- 
ened by a good deal of amateur caiq^entering, but they were not the 
hands of a stone-mason. 

He had not the faintest notion what these technical distinctions 
meant, so he only nodded his head and knelt down by the stove to 
warm his hands. 

“ There was a theatre somewhere hereabouts — the Escurial?” he 
said. 

Mine. Rigol threw up her hands. A theatre ? but yes, an alto- 
gether admirable theatre ; but it had failed three years ago. The 
manager had spent too much on his fairy spectacles, people said. 
And then there had been lions, tigers, rope-dancers, a circus, what 
you will. Pas de chance ! The poor man was now at Clichy, and 
the Escurial has become a cafe chantant. 

“ Ah ! ” madame sighed, and stuck her arms akimbo, “ the loveliest 
woman that ever walked those boards lived and died in this house. 
She had but one fault, the poor dear soul ! ” 

Sebastian bent his head lower over the little black stove, and said 
not a word. But when once Mine. Rigol was fairly launched on the 
flood of talk, she required no assistance to keej) her going. 

“ Oh, but she was a lovely creature, a magnificent woman ! ” she 
exclaimed. “ A little pass^ perhaps, when she came to this house. 
She had lived. She had occupied a palace in the wood beyond 
Passy. Her carriages, horses, diamonds, laces, cashmeres — splen- 
did ! fit for a princess ! And then there came an end of all that. She 
was of a passionate nature, and wine maddened her. She quarrelled 
with a millionaire — twice millionaire — who adored her ; and when 
she came here she could not live without her little taste of cognac. 
It was a slow poison, and I saw her die by inches.” 

' “ What became of her maid ? ” asked Sebastian. 

“ What, you knew them ? ” exclaimed the portress. 

‘‘ She must have had some kind of servant,” answered Sebastian, 
neither admitting nor denying. 

“Naturally. She had a companion — a servant, if you Avill — 
Lisette Fontaine. Lisette acted soubrettes at the Escurial. She was 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


39 


the delight of all the gamins in the fanhonrg. They called after 
her as she walked along the streets. That is popularity, mark you. 
She left this house soon after madame’s death, and took a smarter 
lodging nearer the theatre, and afterward she went to the new thea- 
tre at Belleville.” 

“ Is she there now, do yon suppose ?” asked Sebastian eagerly. 

He would have given a great deal to see Lisette — not altogether a 
l^eifect woman, j^erhaps. But she had been almost his only friend 
in those sad early days which ended in the gloom of death within 
these walls. 

“ No. She left the theatre a year ago. Some say that she mar- 
ried a small tradesman of the quarter, others that she eloped with a 
nobleman. I have never been able to find out what became of her. ” 

Sebastian left his coffee-pot on the stove and went out into the 
streets to buy himself some supper. He would not be treated like a 
fine gentleman by Mine. Eigol. He wanted to cater for himself and 
rough it like the commonest laborer in Paris. That rough beginning 
was a feature in the jirogramme of all those successful careers which 
he had heard of. 

It was growing late, but there were shops still open in this squalid 
quarter— a wine shop, among others, which was also an ordinary at 
which workmen dined off a substantial meal of soup and meat, with 
bread included, for seven sous. Sebastian — henceforth Ishmael — 
went into this little eating and drinking house and took a supper of 
bread and cheese, while he listened to the conversation round him. 
Presently he ventured to talk to some workmen who were smoking 
and drinking camp^che — a mixture of wine and brandy at two sous 
the glass — at the table where he sat. ‘ ‘ Could they tell him anything 
about the masons of Paris ? Where could a man get work ? ” 

“ Are you a skilled mason ? ” asked one of them. 

“ No ; but I am strong, and I am not afraid of work.” 

“ That means you have never handled a hammer in your life,” 
said the man, inclined to sneer. “ You may get employment as a 
bricklayer’s laborer, perhaps, to hand the bricks uj) or to mix mortar 
— gacheur, garcon, they call him. A garden earns as much as three 
francs a day. But even that is difficult for a stranger.” 

“lam not afraid of difficulty,” answered Ishmael. 

The man told him where to look for work ; and he was out next 
morning at daybreak, visiting all the new constructions of the quar- 
ter. It was not till he had wandered as far as Belleville that he got 
a i^romise of work. There were hands enough for the job at present, 
but the foreman liked the look of his broad shoulders, and he should 
take the place of the first gacheur that chose to chomer. Ishmael 
waited about all day, looking at the work going on and familiariz- 
ing himself with the duties of a gacheur. He dined on the ordinaire 
at the little wine shop, sitting at the same table as before, and be- 
ginning to feel accustomed to the place. It was not so terrible an 
ordeal to him to descend into this lower grade as it must have been 
to a spoiled favorite of fortune. He had associated with peasants in 
his own home ; but these Parisian workmen seemed to him crea- 
tures of a coarser clay. They were infinitely cleverer ; but their 


40 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


cleverness was unholy, devilish. They believed in nothing — neither 
in the goodness of God nor of man. They scoffed at 'all sacred 
things in the past and the present. 

Political feeling ran high. The Eepublic W'as not republican 
enough to please the majority. There w^ere a few Bonapartists who 
would like to see the old Imperial eagle spread his wungs over the 
greater part of the civilized world once more — who wanted the wars 
of Italy and Egypt, Germany and Spain, over again. But these 
Avere in a weak minority. There were malcontents who had never 
forgiven the closing of the national workshops ; others who abused 
Louis Blanc for having 23romised a millennium which he was unable 
to realize. 

“Charlatans all,” said one. “What can these white-handed 
gentry know of the rights of labor? Workingmen will never be 
properly governed till a workingman is president.” 

‘ ‘ Down with presidents ! What do we want with a president ? ” 
cried another, growing huslcy over his campeche. “ Your president 
is only a monarch in disguise. He is a leech who sucks the blood 
of the workingman. To-day he is content with an income of 88,000 
francs a day out of the public purse — to-morrow he will want it 
doubled. A few years ago he was an adventurer in America, de- 
pendent upon Louis Philippe’s bounty ; after that a prisoner at Ham ; 
and then a gentleman at large in the streets of London, waiting upon 
fortune. And now he and his fiiends — Moray and Fialin, soi-disant 
Persigny — have all the trump cards in their hands. He has the 
army at his orders — can shoot us all down whenever the fancy seizes 
him. The Government of France should be a great confederation 
of workingmen — a small minority of men who work with their 
brains, an enoraious majority of men who work with their hands. 
Every man to have a direct influence uj^on the legislature, every 
man ” 

‘ ‘ If there were no court the higher branches of trade would stag- 
nate,” said a cabinet-maker. “Whether it is at the Ely see or the 
Tuileries, we must have a court. They say that if the prince-presi- 
dent were emperor, and had things his own way, trade would be 
better than it has been since the time of Louis XIV.” 

This provoked unanimous derision. It was the bourgeoise who 
had a hankering for the glitter and swagger of an empire, not the 
W’orking classes. What they wanted was trade union, otherwise 
trade despotism, international societies, syndicates, the power to 
dictate terms to their employers. 

Sebastian, otherwise Ishmael, sat still and heard everything. His 
eager, receptive intellect caught the spirit of the present moment, 
steeped itself in the surrounding atmosphere. He was of good 
blood ; bore an ancient name; but pride of race had shown itself to 
him on its darker side. He wus ready to be as much a leveller as 
the strongest democrat there. He listened and believed the w^orst 
that w^as said against him who held the reins of the state chariot — 
always a hated personage with one particular section of the Parisian 
world. He, wlio had nothing to look to but labor to win him a 
place in the world, friends, fortune, fame, was ready to exalt the 


AN ISILMAELITE. 41 

nobility of labor, to assert the rights of the workingman as against 
heaven-born generals and senators paid by the state. 

Ishmael was on the ground at Belleville at six o’clock next morn- 
ing ; and before ten he was taken on to the works in the capacity of 
a gacheur, the foreman instructing him in the rudimentary arts of 
that office. The Parisian workman is given to chomage, rarely 
works more than four days a week, and a vacancy of this kind is not 
long in arising. Thus, before he had been three days in the great 
city, Sebastian found himself in the way of earning liis bread. He 
was to be paid two francs and a half a day for his labor, and he was 
to give one franc out of the two and a half to the foreman for his 
bounty in taking on an untiied hand, a youth without recommenda- 
tion or papers. Bub the gain of thirty sous a day was a solid fact, 
and Sebastian felt that he had passed the first mile-post on the long 
high-road that leads to fortune. 

Had he come to Paris crowned with laurels from a iDrovincial uni- 
versity, rich in medals and diplomas, the writer of a prize poem, the 
discoverer of a new planet, the inventor of a new mode of locomo- 
tion, charged with science or poetry, as with the electric current — 
in a word, a genius, he would inevitably have sjjent the first few years 
of his city life in rags and staiwation ; x^erhaps to end his days un- 
timely by a few sous’ w'orth of charcoal, or a leaj) from one of the 
bridges ; but as he was passing ignorant, brought only his youth, 
his strength, and the cunning of his hands to the great labor market, 
he obtained emijloyment immediately. 

He not only found a place in the mighty wheel, buf he kex:)t it. 
He was sober where other men were given to drink — he was earnest, 
patient, industrious, ambitious, among men who for the most x^art 
were idle flaneurs on the boulevard or loungers in the street — for 
the Boulevard de la Chapelle and the passage Menilmontant have 
their idlers as well as the Boulevard des Caxjucines or the Place de 
la Madeleine. 

He was scoffed at for his vii’tues, suspected for his superior air 
and manners, his reserve as to his antecedents. He was called 
Mouchard, Orleanist, Chouan, in disguise ; but he held his peace and 
went his way, offending no one, yet with a look of reserved force 
which indicated that it were not over safe to be too offensive to him. 
To the fellow- workmen who were inclined to be friendly he was 
civil, listened to their wrongs and discussed their claims and the 
X^rivileges for which they clamored. Little by little he caught the 
tone of his surroundings, and was almost as Parisian as his comx>an- 
ions, but he never sank to their level. Instinctively, without a hint 
from the man himself, save that imx^lied in the name which he bore, 
they penetrated the secret of his existence. He was a gentleman by 
birth, the cast-off son of a noble father. They called him the mar- 
quis, not in derision, for at nineteen he had the tone of a man born 
to be the leader of men. He was not long gacheur, condemned to 
stir lime and sand in a smoking heap. He showed himself skilful 
enough to be set to better work before he had been three weeks in 
the emx 3 loyment of the Belleville builder. The work ux)on which he 
was engaged was the erection of a block of workmen’s houses, the 


42 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


beginning of a mighty boulevard, great white stone mansions rising 
gigantic from the midst of a broad plateau, fringed on the fui*ther 
side by the squalid courts and alleys of Menilmontant ; wooden 
sheds, houses of plaster and canvas, the dens and lairs of abject 
poverty and reckless crime, seething boil-pot of want, vice, disease, 
misery, into which the police penetrated once i.u a while in pursuit 
of some arch-offender at the peril of their lives. 

The builder was not slow to notice a youth who woult] work, who 
worked as if his muscular arm delighted in its labor, as if the choral 
swing of the hammer were to him as the melody of bridal song. He 
picked Sebastian out from the nick, heard his story — hypothetical 
story — from the foreman, and observed him afterward with a keener 
interest. After all there is something in good blood, and when a 
gentleman does take it into his head to work, Jacques Bonhomme is 
handicapped against him. This was what the builder said to himself 
as he w’atched the muscular fonn — straight, slim, tall — the finely 
shaped head so loftily posed uiion the neck of a young Alcides, the 
clearly cut yet massive features, marked brows, aquiline nose, fal- 
con eye, a mouth firm as if moulded out of marble. No common 
workman this assuredly, and yet he lived as the other men lived, 
went to his seven-sous ordinary after his work, and had a nest high 
up in one of those dreary barracks yonder, near the new hospital, 
which had been built with the bequest of a benevolent lady called 
Laborissi^re. 

One of Sebastian’s first acts on finding himself in the way of earn- 
ing his bread was to send Father Bressant the bulk of his money. 
There was a deficiency of two louis and a half for the month’s rent 
and the expenses of the journey, but this sum Sebastian meant to 
make good out of his savings before he was many months older. 
Life is passing cheap in a great city to vigorous, temperate, self- 
denying youth. Nasmyth, a young man reared in the comfort and 
elegance of a successful artist’s household, had the courage to live 
the first year of his London life upon ten shillings a week — a volun- 
tary sacrifice to the spirit of manly independence, since larger means 
were well within his reach — and in so doing set an example to in- 
dustrious youth which should endure for all time — a nobler thing 
even than the hammer which made his name forever famous. And 
Sebastian Caradec had the Nasmyth temper, the love of mechanical 
work for its own sake, the eye and the hand of this artist in stone or 
in iron. 


CHAPTEE YI. 

“the end of that mirth is heaviness.” 

Time out of mind the Faubourg St. Antoine has been the quarter 
of furniture-dealers and furniture-makers. German for the most 
pai-t these workmen who have succeeded to the and 

scarcely improved tools of Boule and his sons ; but here and there a 


AN ISIUIAELITB. 


43 


native of Paris holds his own against the thrifty, hard-working, and 
hard-living square heads, and by the delicacy of his workmanship 
and the grace of his designs demonstrates that the glory of the 
French 6beniste, the artist artisan whose work was once renowned 
all the civilized world over, has not utterly departed. 

Such an one was Pere Lemoine, a man well on in his seventh de- 
cade, more or less of a drunkard always, and betimes an idler, but 
an artist to the tip’s of his finger-nails. Had Pere Lemoine abjured 
the bottle axid worked steadily in the years that were gone he would 
have occupied a very differen't lodging from that wretched ground 
floor den looking into the yard of a huge baiTack-like pile, between a 
patch of waste land and a little cluster of filthy courts and alleys 
the remnant of a past age ; alleys that had seen the fall of the Bas- 
tile and the days of the Bed Terror ; alleys in which the glorious 
memories of July were still fresh, and which had sent forth their 
contingent of revolt in ’32 and ’48. Pere Lemoine might have been 
at the top of the tree, an illustrious ornament to the furniture trade, 
said the dealers and the middlemen who knew the man and his 
woi'k. But for that man who will only work when driven by abso- 
lute want, who loves not his art for its own sake, and who would 
rather wallow among a herd of other wallowers in some low drinking 
cellar than sit beside the clieeiy hearth of a decent, prosperous home, 
there is no hope. Upon the downward path which that man treads 
there is no end but the pauper’s grave. 

Pere Lemoine might have been a master in the trade, and he was 
a slave— a rich man, and he was a beggar ; but he had taken his 
own way of living, and he was wont in his cuj)s to defend his choice 
between the two great highroads of life. ^Yell, he would argue, he 
was as poor as Job. There were men with not a tithe of his talent 
who had made fortunes ; but what would you? — it was not his nature 
to be a drudge. The man who makes a fortune by his trade is your 
stolid, mindless mechanic, your mere machine of a man,, yop sordid 
plodder, who never shares a measure of vitriol or a litre of little blue 
with a friend, or takes a night’s pleasure — a fish-blooded creature, 
coinent to starve and pinch himself and his family, and to toil early 
and late for thirty years or so in order to be rich at the dull end of 
his dreary life, when such poor senses as he possessed at the begin- 
ning are half dead wuthin him. 

“ I don’t envy such a slave his frock-coat and his fine house at 
Asni^res, or his money in the funds,” exclaimed Pere Lemoine con- 
temptuously, lolling over the stained old marble table at his favorite 
brasserie. The Faithful Pig. “ A man who has not enjoyed friend- 
ship, good company, a song or a dance, good wine and his pochinelle 
of fine champagne now and then at a merry rendezvous like this— 
such a man, I say, has never lived. My faith ! what should I do 
with a frock-coat or a villa in the suburbs ? I detest the country and 
I love to take mv ease in my blouse and my slippers. I have worn 
a frock-coat in inv day— I vdio talk to you ; and I tell you that the 
dav is not far distant when we shall all wear blouses, when there will 
l>e"no fine gentlemen, and the frock-coat will go the way of red heels 
and hair powder — to the gutter, to the rag heap with all such 


44 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


trumpery ! There is no true nobility but in the man himself. 
Thews, sinews, heart, brains — there is your only patent of rank. ” 

Not much nobility in the speaker sprawling across the table in 
that low den of The Faithful Pig — an inner and sacred apartment 
devoted exclusively to regular customers. And such customers ! 
There were M. Alphonse, in his dubious linen and sham jewelry, 
with Mile. Marmite, his little friend, sitting at a table in a corner, 
squabbling over the young lady’s budget. There were girls in the 
very dawn of girlhood, yet steeped to the lips in the knowledge of 
evil, hovering near the crowded tables and exchanging foul jokes 
with the drinkers ; shabby finery, slipshod feet, glassy eyes, a hectic 
fiush upon hollow cheeks — the lively of vice, the stamp of early 
death. And amidst the Babel of voices, the crescendo of oaths, the 
reek of coarse tobacco and coarser spirits, there sounded the melan- 
choly strains of a cracked tenor, as an old cabotin, at a table in a 
corner — thirty years ago a famous opera singer and spoilt darling of 
duchesses — Sang a sentimental ballad about the old house at home 
and the mother’s grave to a circle of half-tipsy amateurs. The 
fouler the atmosphere, the viler the jilace and the people, the more 
certain was the success of that plaintive ditty. The old cabotin had 
lived upon it for the last seven years ; ever since he left off trying to 
exist respectably as a teacher of singing, coureur de cachets, in the 
Faubourg St. Germain. 

It was in this low haunt that the trolleur spent his evenings — for 
him veritable noctes ambrosianoe. After all, the atmosphere of 
man’s happiness does not depend upon the laws of abstract beauty, 
or we might all be flying off to the spicy isles of the Indian Ocean, 
or the floral wonders of the silent forests beside the Amazon. A 
man’s idea of hapj^iness is the life which suits him best ; and to 
drink, and talk, and laugh, and denounce the powers that be, in a 
low tavern, was Pierre Lemoine’s ideal existence. He came to The 
Faithful Pig with alacrity every evening, in fair weather or foul. 
He left late in the night, with fond regret. There were nights, in- 
deed, when he never left at all, but lay all his length among the 
sawdust beside the pewter counter, buvant son vin, till the cold gi’ay 
dawn came staring at him through the holes in the shutter, and the 
garcon came, sleei:)y and unwashed, to open the windows and broom 
away the traces of last night’s orgy. 

Pere Lemoine, taking liis life thus easily, had never vet been able 
to extricate himself from the clutches of the middle-man. He 
ryorked as he liked, when he liked, in his old den. When he had 
finished a piece of furniture — cabinet, escritoire, bonheur du jour, as 
the case might be — he summoned his agent and ally, the charabia, 
an Auvergnat, who put the article on his truck and carried it round 
to the furnitur^dealers to dispose of it for the best price he could 
get ; and then there was played, over and over again, a neat little 
comedy in three acts, wlie'/eiii the trolleur enacted the pigeon and 
the charabia the hawk— a lidle plot so transparent that old Lemoine, 
ryho was no fool, must liav^e seen through it after very few repeti- 
tions ; only it suited his temper better to be duped over and over 
again, to be the prey of an ignorant peasant, who had begun life as 


AN I8IIMAELITE. 


45 


a shoeblack on the Bonlevard du Temple, than to work hard and to 
live temperately. 

The first act of the comedy consisted of two scenes. Scene I. , the 
departure of the charabia in the morning with the piece of fnrnitnre, 
cheery, jocund, full of hope ; Scene II., the return of the faithful 
Auvergnat at eventide, gloomy and despairing. The furniture trade 
is going to the dogs, he declares. France is on the eve of a revolu- 
tion, and people are afraid to fui’nish houses which may be con- 
sumed in the general bonfire next week. He has hawked that 
escritoire, a masterpiece, all over Paris, and not a dealer would bid 
for it. End of Act I. 

Act II. consists of a single scene : return of the charabia three 
days after to say that he has found a dealer who will give *just half 
the price Lemoine has asked for that escritoire. Lemoine, in low 
water, but not quite a sec, declines. 

Act III. occurs a week later. By this time Lemoine has exchanged 
his last sous for canTj')eche, or vitriol, and is an easy prey for the 
Auvergnian hawk. The benevolent charabia comes to offer a kind- 
ness. He is only a poor messenger, a hewer of wood and a carrier 
of water ; he cannot pay as the rich merchant would pay, he does 
not want the furniture at all, and if he offers anything for it he does 
so out of pure good nature, to oblige his employer. He will not 
offer as little as that miserly dealer in the Eue Vivienne, a man 
who has half the nobility for his customers ; no, he will go ten x^er 
cent, more than that Haiq^agon offered. Ijemoine, languishing for 
more vitriol and the intellectual society of The Faithful Pig, accex3ts 
the offer, x^^^ris with his handiwork for half its value, and thus 
affords the charabia the ox^x^oriunity of growing rich, and of blos- 
soming some day into a x^rosperous furniture-dealer in the Faubourg 
St. Antoine. 

Naturally, this little comedy cannot be x^layed too frequently. 
The charabia must sometimes x^erform his commission with approxi- 
mate fidelity, but the game may be played a good many times in the 
course of a year with such a man as Pierre Lemoine, wiiose alco- 
holized brain has long lost the cax^acity for remembering the de- 
tails of a year’s existence. “Vogue la galore” is the drunkard’s 
motto. 

The Lemoines, husband and wife, had lived in that ground-floor 
den in the Bue Sombreuil for nearly forty years. The house had 
been built not long after the Terror, while the fall of the old fortress 
prison house yonder was yet green in the memory of those wiio 
watched the barrack-like xule rising from the dreariness of a dismal 
w^aste. Pierre Lemoine could just remember the wueck of the Bas- 
tile ; the roar of cannon, and the cries of the maddened crowd wore 
the earliest sounds he could recall as he looked lIKckward along the 
cloudy avenue of the past. The picture of those da3^s wiien he w^as 
a barefooted little galoxun at his father’s knees seemed far more 
vivid than that of ten years ago. He was a married man and a 
father long before tlie B.'evolution of July, 1830, wiiicli drove Charles 
X. into exile and gave France her Citizen King. He and his wife 
were among the crowed at the review on the Boulevard du Temple, 


46 


AN miMAELITE. 


when Fieschi’s infernal machine exploded, and Marshal Mortier fell 
dead by the side of his king. 

There was nothing that Pierre Lemoine remembered in his life 
better than the building of the Rue Sombreuil. He had played as a 
barefooted gamin among the builder’s rabbish, the stone dust and 
shavings, had watched the carpenters at work, and the g^cheur mix- 
ing his mortar, had seen the tall white house rise stone by stone out 
of the ground. His father was an eb6niste like himself, working 
independently at his ovm good will, just as Pierre Lemoine worked 
now ; and as soon as the boy was old enough to hold hammer or 
chisel he began to learn his father’s trade. There was an elder 
brother, a soldier, following the fortunes of the First Consul, and 
there wag a sister who worked at a great military outfitter’s in the 
Faubourg du Temple, and who came home at night with arms and 
fingers aching, after ten hours’ stitching at harsh serge coats and 
trousers. 

It was a great epoch for the Lemoine family when they moved 
into the ground-floor rooms on the south side of the big white 
house. It was all so clean, so white, so dazzling, such a contrast to 
the narrow alley from which they emerged — a darksome passage 
where all the houses looked as if they were on the point of falling 
into each other’s arms, a passage steeped in the foulness of cen- 
turies, reeking with indescribable odors. In this new white barrack 
all the sanitary conditions were as vile as they could be, no one 
knowing or caring about sanitation in those days. But the house 
was new, and foul odors had not had time to grow. 

The Lemoines were prosperous in those early days of Consulate 
and Emigre ; prosperous because industrious and temperate. 
PieiTe’s father was a first-rate workman, and although it pleased 
him to be independent and to supply the dealers at his own pleasure, 
he was regular in his habits and turned out plenty of work in the 
year. At twenty young Lemoine married a neighbor’s daughter and 
took his wife home to the family nest. There was a slip of a room 
off the living room, which did well enough for the young couple. 
The elder brother was otherwise accommodated far off in a foreign 
grave. He had fallen at Auerstadt, and his sword and a smoky 
wreath of immortelles hanging above the chimney -jnece, amidst Mfere 
Lemoine’s batterie de cuisine, were the only tokens left of his exist- 
ence. The mother owed her dead boy’s sword to the thoughtful 
kindness of a young olficer who had since that time trodden the 
same dark road and found a grave between the Elbe and the snows 
of IVIoscow. 

When the Citizen King came to rule over his loving subjects Pore 
et Mere Lemoine the elder were both dead, and Pierre and his wife 
lived in the Rue Sombreuil with their only child, a pale, graceful 
girl of nineteen, with large violet eyes and chestnut hair, which were 
the admiration of all the gossips in the neighborhood. Pierre and 
his wife were known as pbre et mere and the last generation was 
forgotten. 

Mere Lemoine and her daughter did not get on very happily to- 
gether. The mother was a person of fretful disposition, given to 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


47 


tears, and not innocent of a liking for wine and spirits. She was not 
a confirmed, drunkard in these days, but she was just beginning a 
system of tippling which must inevitably lead to a bad end. Jean- 
neton, the daughter, was fond of pleasure, and somewhat vain of her 
pale, fair j^rettiness, which had won her too many outspoken compli- 
ments from students and clerks as she went to her work across the 
river yonder in the Quartier Latin, a dangerous neighborhood for 
youth and beauty in those days. 

Pere Lemoine had apprenticed his daughter to a clear-starcher in 
a good way of business in a long, dull, shabby street near the Eue 
Fleurus ; but dull and shabby as the street was, it boasted one of the 
most iDO^Jular restaurants in the students’ quarter, a house called The 
Pantagruel, especially celebrated for its gras double a la Lyonnais 
and its rognons a trous les diables. 

At first Jeanne ton rebelled sorely against her apprenticeship to the 
art of clear-starching ; it was killing, cruel, abominable, she told her 
parents. There was no other trade in all Paris that would have been 
so hateful, to stand stooping over an ironing-board all day iron- 
ing shirt-fronts and goffering frills — for in 1832 the frilled shirt- 
front was not yet altogether exploded ; there were elderly gentlemen 
who still wore those decoi-ations. The whole business was hateful 
to Jeanneton. She complained of the heat of the stoves, the weight 
of the irons, the smell of the starch ; and she came home of an even- 
ing white as the shirts she had ironed, and dissolved into tears at the 
least word of reproach. Her appetite was wretched. 

Moved by these complaints, M^re Lemoine herself began to make 
a trouble of her daughter’s avocation, and had more than one quarrel 
with her husband on the subject. Ptire Lemoine was well started 
upon the downward course of time, and spent half his earnings on 
cheap brandy. The girl was dying by inches. Mere Lemoine told 
her husband ; it was a blackamoor’s slavery to which he had sold 
her yonder, and they were not a penny the richer for her suffering. 

“ Perhaps you would rather she were in the streets,” growled Le- 
moine, who thought clear-starching a genteel trade, and that he had 
done very well for his daughter when he got her accepted as a pupil 
of Madame Rebeque, at the sign of the Garden of Eden, without a 
sou of premium. When she had worked for madam a year gratis, 
she was to receive twelve francs a week, which was to be increased 
six months afterward to eighteen. At the outfitter’s in the Fau- 
bourg du Temple his sister had never earned more than two francs 
a day, toiling early and late ; and the stooping over her work all day 
had given her a chest complaint, which earned her to P^re Lachaise 
before she was thirty. 

Lemoine would hear of no complainings ; he was not a duke or a 
millionaire, he protested savagely, but an honest mechanic, and his 
daughter must work as he worked ; which comparison, seeing that 
P(ire Lemoine seldom labored more than three days out of the seven, 
hardly bore upon the case of a girl who had to go to her work every 
morning, except Sunday, at six o’clock, and was seldom free to come 
home till seven. 

The tears and sad, sullen looks went on for about six months. 


48 


Ali I8UMAELITE. 


Then came a change. Smiles, alacrity, a moi-o careful toilet, the 
poor little cotton gown and grisette’s muslin caj) adjusted as jauntily 
as if they had been the satin and leghorn of a countess. The niothor 
and father heard the girl singing as she went to her work in the cold 
early morning, long before they thought of leaving their dingy 
pallets. 

“ She has got the better of all that nonsense and is growing fond of 
her work,” said Pere Lemoine. “ See how wise we were not to listen 
to her rigmaroles. That is the only way to manage a girl of her age. 
They are as full of fancies as the great ham fair is full of mounte- 
banks and pickpockets.” 

After this period of joyousness and alacrity there came another 
change. Jeanneton was gay and sad by turns ; to-day in tears, to- 
morrow full of wild spirits, laughing, chattering at the humble suj)- 
per-table, cheeks flushed, eyes flashing. At such times she looked 
her handsomest, and M(ire Ijemoine sighed to think so much beauty 
was being wasted in a clear-starcher’s workshop. 

Neither father nor mother were thoughtful enough or careful 
enough to read all these signs and tokens, which would have had a 
very clear significance for wise and loving parents. Neither of them 
ever thought of following Jeanneton to her work, or asking any 
questions of Madame Kebeque. There had been no complaints ; 
therefore it might be supposed the girl did her duty. She left homo 
at the same hour every morning ; and, if she had taken to being 
much later at night, it was because there was overtime work to -be 
done, for which she was paid liberally, in proof of which there were 
the four or five francs she handed her mother at the end of the 
week. 

One bright spring morning Jeanneton left the Eue Sombreuil at 
the usual hour, carrying all her wardrobe neatly i:)acked in a large 
red cotton handkerchief. Neither father nor mother were astir to 
see her depart, and it W'as late in the forenoon that Mt^re Lemoine, 
by no means a notable housewife, w’ent into the darksome closet 
where the girl slej)t, to give a coup de balai, and discovered a little 
bit of a note pinned on to the patchwork counterpane : 

“ I am going away with the man of my choice, for good fortune 
or evil. Don’t fret about me, poor old mother. I should have died 
at that odious laundry business if it had not been for my Rene. I 
shall come back some day, perhaj^s a lady, in a bonnet and an Indian 
shawl, and then you and the father will be pleased with me. If ever 
my Ren(3 is rich I will send you money. God bless and keep you, 
poor little mother ! Rene is a follower of a person called Voltaire, 
and says there is no God, and that we are all fools to believe in jus- 
tice and mercy up in the skies, where there are only the stars and 
millions of miles of empty space. Rut I like to think there is some 
One yonder above all those dear little stars. Adieu, and forgive 
your poor little Jeanneton.” 

The damsel’s parents were as furious as if they had guarded and 
treasui-ed this one daughter, as the apple of their eye. Not Shylock 
himself stormed and chafed worse at the elopement of Jessica, albeit 
she carried off good store of ducats to her lover, than Pierre Lemoine 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


49 


at Jeannetou’s cvanisliment. lie rushed off to Madame Rebeque, 
half stupefied and wholly savage with strong drink, to demand of 
her what she had done "with his daughter. 

The laundress treated his angry interrogations with the high 
hand. 

“ My faith, what do I know of your daughter ? It was for you 
and her mother to see that she conducted herself wisely. Name of 
a name ! she has been troublesome enough for the last three months ; 
coming to her work late — always wanting to leave early — for some 
excuse or other.” 

“ Leave early ! ” echoed Pere Lemoine. “ Why, she has been 
working till ten o’clock at night, she told us. She brought us the 
money she was paid for overtime.” 

‘ ‘ I pay for overtime ! What a farce ! ” cried the laundress. ‘ ‘ If 
she has brought you money, it was for no overtime with me.” 

There was no more to get out of Madame Rebeque, who did not 
want to say all she knew, lest the matter should be made trouble- 
some to herself in any way. One more apprentice gone to the bad 
made no difference to her. It was the way half of them went. 
What would you ? 

Father Lemoine went out of the clear-starcher’s shop sobered, 
quieted, crestfallen. La Rebeque’s fierce black eyes and fiery apple 
cheeks, grenadier bust and shoulders, bare arms and limbs, had been 
too much for him. He went slowly along the shabby little street, 
and, half-way down, encountered a band of noisy students, long- 
haired, sallow, lank, with Byronic collars and short pipes, issuing- 
out of Le Pantagruel, where they had been eating their midday 
breakfast merrily. 

Lemoine turned and followed them as they strolled off toward 
Luxembourg. These -were the wolves his poor lamb met every day, 
and among such as these her seducer was doubtless to be met. 
“ Rene,” he was not likely to forget that name. He did not know 
that it was a name just then made popular by a famous poet, and 
therefore likely to be chosen as an alias by aspiring youth. 

The students had to pass Madame RObeque’s window, with its 
white muslin curtains and hyacinths in dark blue glasses. A couple 
of them stopped in front of the window and peered inside. 

“ Take care that the Rebeque does not see you looking after her 
chickens,” said a third. “ She is the kind of a woman to throw a 
bowl of dirty water over you, if she caught you peeping. You 
would not be the first to be so baptized.” 

“ I was looking for that pretty palotte, that little gentille Jean- 
neton,” said the other. 

“ Lost time, my friend. The palotte has no eyes for any of us,” 
sai 4 the other. “She is devoted to that unknown with the black 
mustaches, who breakfasts twice a week at the Pantagruel.” 

“ The Prince Rgne. Ah, I know the gentleman. A regular lion 
of the Boulevard du Temple.” 

They passed on merrily, with much fooling as they went. P^re 
Ijemoine turned upon his heel. It seemed to him that these stu- 
dents had told him all they had to tell. They admired his daughter, 

4 


50 


AN ISUMAELITE. 


as one of the belles of Mine. Eebeque’s establishment ; but Jeanne- 
ton's lover was not one of them. 

He felt in his trousers iiocket and found a franc and a few sous, 
quite enough to warrant his entrance into a cheap restaurant such as 
the Pantagruel. He went in and took his seat in a dark little cor- 
ner, where a blouse of dubious cleanliness would not offend the eye 
of customers of a sui^erior class, notwithstanding which laudable 
delicacy the waiter looked askance at M. Lemoine’s chin and greasy 
blue raiment. 

He ordered a bouillon and a fine champagne, otherwise best cognac. 
The tables were alb deserted after breakfast hour ; and he had the 
place all to himself, which was exactly what he wanted. The 
waiter brought him his soup and the brandy bottle. He helped 
himself in a leisurely way, and then filled a second glass. 

“ Let us chat a little,” he said, pointing to the glass, which the 
waiter accepted with a gracious bow. The lady of the counter had 
gone to some obscure den in the background to eat her own break- 
fast, and there was no one to object to the waiter’s hobnol>bing with 
this very dubious-looking customer. The big sandy cat, a well- 
known character, was prowling in a forest of table legs, picking up 
a savory morsel here and there, and rubbing herself against one of 
the legs, as if in a vague expression of gratitude to the universe in 
general. 

“ There is a gentleman who breakfasts here sometimes, the Prince 
R6ng — a gentleman with a dark mustache ? ” 

“ Connu,” answered the man, sijDping the bright yellow spirit, “I 
have the honor to wait upon him.” 

“ Do you know who and what he is ? ” 

“ There are wiser than I who would be glad to know that,” an- 
swered the waiter ; shrugging his shoulders. “ He is not a student 
and he is not a mechanic. He is pretty free with his money, what- 
ever he is. Some take him for an author or a’l^oet — one of the new 
romantic school, which was so joliment hissed the other day at the' 
i’lieatre Francaise ; others say he is a nobleman in disguise. There 
; IS one who hinted that he is a thief, like Mandrin or Cartouche.” 

“ That man spoke the truth, whoever he was ! ” cried Pere Le- 
1 )ine, savagely. “ He is a thief, this villain, for he has stolen my 
only daughter, as good a girl as ever lived, the staff and comfort of 
my life,” and here the ebeniste broke into a passion of sobs, burying 
his head in his folded arms upon the table of the Pantagruel. 

He went back to his hole in the Eue Sombreuil at nightfall steeped 
in fiery liquor, having spent the day as a flaneur among the lowest 
brasseries in the Quartier Latin. But he made no farther effort to 
discover the true character of the person known as Prince Eene or 
the fate of his only daughter. 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


51 


CHAPTER VII. 

“the crown of old IklEN.” 

Three years and more had gone by since Jeanneton’s elopement, 
and it was August — season at which Paris is at its worst, and in 
which sultry period the Rue Sombreuil was a place to be avoided 
as carefully as the Jews’ quarter in Rome or Frankfort. A heavy 
palpable atmosphere of heat brooded over the Place de la Bastille, 
and the Faubourg St. Antoine, and hung like a ragged veil upon the 
cemetery yonder and the wild crags and precipices of the stone quar- 
ries by the buttes du Chaumont. The crowded population of the big 
house in which the Lemoines lived existed as best they might upon 
the scanty allowance of fresh air which found its way into their rooms 
from the deep well on which their windows looked, or came down 
into the yard below for coolness. The very flowers which here and 
there decorated a window-sill languished in their earthen pots. The 
very scarlet runners drooi)ed upon their strings. Only the fonl 
smells flourished and fattened in this sickly, suflbcating August heat. 
An odor of stale cabbage and sour dish-water was in the very air 
men breathed. People talked of last year’s awful visitation of 
cholera, and predicted a return of the scourge, gloating ghoul-liko 
over the picture of greater horrors to come, a more terrible cup of 
affliction to be drunk than the death chalice of the year gone by. 
There had been a long drought, which j)i’oiHised well for the corn- 
fields and the vineyai-ds, but which was felt as an actual scourge in 
the crowded neighborhoods of Paris — no welcome rain to wash the 
gutters, to flush the primitive sewers of that period, to cool the hot 
pavements and splash with refreshing sound upon the stony roads. 
All was fiery and dry, as if Paris had been one huge furnace. 

Father Lemoine carried his cabinet work into the yard, and worked 
just outside his den, using the window-sill as a table for his tools. 
The children came and stood about him as he worked, and made 
their remarks upon the mysteries of his craft — his glue-pot, his 
chisels, his gouges, and fine little nails. But the work stood still a 
good many hours of every day, sometimes for days together, with a 
j)iece of old sacking over it, while Pere Lemoine amused himself at 
The Faithful Pig reading the news, playing dominoes, talking* poli- 
tics, grumbling against the new king and liis ministers. Paris had 
naturally expected the millennium after the glorious days of July ; 
and the reign of the elected monarch had as yet fallen some way 
short of the Parisian idea of millennium. The old Faubourg of St. 
Antoine, j^opulous as an ant-hill, was the seething hotbed of revo- 
lutionary feeling; and men who drank in those historic wine-shojDS 
were more drunken with strong words than with strong wine. Le- 
nioiiie, the trolleur, was an ardent politician in these days, a mem- 
ber of the Society of the Rights of Man, and full of undisciplined 
eloquence about his own right to work as little and drink as much 
as he liked. 


53 


AJSr milMAELITE. 


Mere Lemoine was not always at home in this sultry weather. 
Her husband’s earnings had been a diminishing quantity during the 
last year or so, not because he worked worse or was worse paid for 
his work, but because he worked less than of yore. Drunken hab- j 
its were beginning to exercise their usual effect. He was idJe and ; 
irregular in his life, worked with fuiy for a couple of days, and then ^ 
left off for three, or worked like a demon for a morning and spent 
the whole afternoon out of doors. Mere Lemoine found that she i 
must do something for her own part to swell the family budget, or 
else go very often without fricot or pat6 in the cupboard. She had , 
been educated in all the arts of fine laundiy work, and to that kind 
of work she naturally returned. She went to Mme. Eebeque and 
engaged herself to that person as ironer for four days a w^eek ; the 
other two days would be quite sufficient to devote to the menage in ^ 
the Kue Sombreuil, which already left much to be desired in the 
way of purity, and fell far short of a Dutch interior in neatness and 
polish. 

At Mme. Eebeque’s the bereft mother heard various details of her 
daughter’s lapse from good ways. How La Palotte, as she was called 
in the laundry, had first been seen walking with a tall man in a 
frock-coat in the gardens of the Luxembourg ; how she had been ob- 
served to wear a blue bead necklace and a pair of real gold earrings ; 
and liow she had been seen at a later period driving with the same 
man — a handsome man with a thick black mustache — in a forty sous i 

(hired carriage) ; how she was known to have gone to dances at the J 

Ere Catalan ; how she had told Herminie, that stout girl in the blue 
cotton frock, that her lover was a nobleman’s son and meant to 
mairy her. His family lived at a chateau near Nimes and he was 
to take her to live there with them. She was to live like a lady, 
learn to play the piano, and she was to wear silk gowns with gigot 
sleeves. All this M6re Lemoine heard from the workwomen. 
I\j[me. Eebeque still pretended to have had no hint of her appren- 
tice’s danger. 

“Who knows if the poor child was not telling the truth all the 
time ! She may be living as a lady in a grand chateau, and her hus- 
band may have made her promise to hold no communication with 
her parents,” said Mere Lemoine, who would fain have induced the 
laundry to loelieve a fable which she herself sorely doubted. 

The laundresses laughed aloud over their ironing board. 

“lliey all tell the same story, these fine gentlemen,” said one — 
“astern father, a grand chateau, the family name, impossible to ' 
make a marriage of inclination until the father dies, and then she 
will be mistress of the chateau and tout le tremblement. And most 
likely your fine gentleman is only a clerk at ninety francs a month, 
or a student in law or medicine, with a father keeping a' shop some- 
where in the provinces. It is only fools who believe sucli stories, 
but the Palotte was born innocent — always moping by herself, or cry- 
ing in corners, never taking kindly to her work or to our company. 
8nch a girl is an easy prey for a scoundrel.” 

No one was able to tell Mere Lemoine anything more about the 
Prince Eene than that he was tall and good-looking, with a black | 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 53 

mnstaclie and a militaiy walk. He had not been seen in the quarter 
since Jeanneton’s elopement. 

And now it wns more than three years since the girl’s flight, and 
not a line had come from her to tell whether she was among the 
living. 

“ She is dead, I hope,” said Jacqnes Lemoine, brutally; but the 
mother still kept a tender corner in her heart for the girl to whom 
she had not been over-kind when they two were together. 

It was the end of August, and the evening air was hea\y with an 
impending thunder-storm. There had been several thunder-storms 
during that month of sultry weather, and the leaden-hued skies 
seemed charged with electricity. To-night, as Mere Lemoine 
walked home from her laundry, there was that terrible stillness 
which comes before the warring of the heavens. Lights were burn- 
ing dimly in some of the windows of the Sombreuil barrack ; but 
the general impression of the courtyard, as M^re Lemoine went in 
through the archway, was one of cavernous darkness. 

Her own room was darker still, and she had to grope upon the 
chimney-piece for matches and a tinder-box. ^Yhile she was fum- 
bling about among dirty brass candlesticks and saucepan lids, some- 
thing stiiTed upon the hearth and startled her violently — something 
which she touched with her foot presently, while her trembling 
hands struck a light. What was it — a dog, or something human ? 

It was very human. A white face looked up at her presently, 
passive, ghastly in the blue light of the sulxdiur match. 

“ Mother ! ” came like a cry of j^ain from pale, quivering lij^s. 

“ Mon Lieu ! ” cried the mother, falling on her knees beside that 
crouching figure, while the match fell and exjured upon the cold 
hearth by 'vs hich the wanderer squatted. “ My child, Jeanneton, and 
alive ! ” 

“Not very long to live, mother, or I should not be here to-night,” 
the hollow voice answered. It was not Jeanneton’s old voice. 
Something told Mere Lemoine that it was the voice of one whose 
life was fading just as the match had flickered out upon the hearth 
a moment before. 

“ No, no, filette ; don’t say that. Suppose there has been trouble 
— let that x^ass. Our hearts are not stone ; we know how to forgive. 
Wait wliile I strike another match. Your are tired and faint. There 
is a drop of wine in the cupboard, I dare say, and that will revive 
you.” 

The tinder-box flashed again, another match was struck and the 
candle lighted. The mother set it on the table and then turned to 
look at her daughter, who still sat on the hearth, with her head and 
shoulders resting against the side of the chimney-piece. 

Alas, what a change was there ! La Palotte, as they had called 
her a*: the laundry, had once been of a lily-like fairness. She had 
now a yellow tint, as of a face moulded out of wax. Her cheeks were 
hollow, her lips had a rmiple tinge ; her eyes had that awful lustre 
which tells of lung disease ; her shrunken hands were almost trans- 
X^ent, and the shoulders— the x^oor, bent shoulders— and hollow 
chest indicated the extremity of weakness. 


54 


AN ISUMAELITE. 


“ Paiivrette,” sobbed the mother, lifting this vanishing creature 
in her arms, on her lap, as when she was a child of ten or eleven. 
Alas ! as light a burden now as in those earlier days. “ My pet, 
■what has befallen you ? ” 

“ Only misery, mother ; the fate that befalls every woman who 

trusts a No, I will not speak evil of him. It was destiny more 

than that he was unkind. If the world were more just, men more 
merciful to each other, my life would have been different.” 

“ Tell me everything, ch6rie ; fear not your poor old mother. The 
father will be home presently, and we wall tell him any story you 
will ; but have no secrets from me.” 

“ I will not, mother,” she answered faintly. “ Oh, how good you 
are ! I thought you would thrust me out of doors, spurn me with 
your foot, when you found me on your hearth. I will tell you by- 
and-by — everything — but not yet.” 

The dry lips faltered, as if the speaker w’^as going to faint ; then 
Mere Lemoine placed the girl in an old arm-chair — a Voltaire — 
wdiich the ebeniste occupied in his hours of leisure. She rushed to 
the cupboard and brought out a bottle with a remnant of wine left 
from last night’s supper — another bottle in a secret corner on the 
shelf above held a few spoonfuls of brandy — she mixed the two in a 
tumbler and gave it to her daughter, who drank greedily. 

“My mouth was iDarched,” she muripured, putting dowm the glass 
with her tremulous hand, while her mother brought out some frag- 
ments of charcuterie — the remains of an assiette assortie purchased 
for the morning’s breakfast — odd iDieces of i)ork and sausage. Mdre 
Lemoine put these on the table, with knife and fork and plate, and 
a loaf of bread. 

“ I_have walked a long way since daybreak,” faltered Jeanneton. 
“The roads were hot and dusty — my feet burned like fire. It was 
like w’alking on red-hot iron.” 

“ Where have you come from ? ” 

“ Toulon,” answered the girl. 

“ Toulon.! WTiat took you to Toulon ? ” 

“Fate! Don’t ask me anything to-niglA. mother. Let me have 
one night’s rest under a roof— in a bed. I have not sleT)t in one for 
nearly a month.” 

“My poor child! And the chateau near Nimes, and the rich 
father ? ” 

“ What ! you heard of that?” 

“Yes. lam at work with La Kebeque. Your father does not 
ow'n so much as of old ; one must help a little.” 

“Poor mother! Yes, the chateau, the noble father, the silk 
gowms, and carriages, and piano ; the life that I was to lead far 
aw^ay. All lies, mother ; lies which only a baby or an idiot w^ould 
believe. But that is past and gone. Mother, I have brought you 
trou’nle.” 

“ Never mind the trouble. Eat something, my pet ; try to eat.” 

Jeanneton made an attempt, but those savory inoi sels of pork had 
no sap for her dry lips. The wine had comfoAed her— she drained 
the glass— but she had no appetite— her throat seemed thick and 


AN ISHMAELIl'E. 55 

swollen — slie conld, with difficulty, swallow two or three mouthfuls 
of bread. 

“ I am not hungry, mother ; I think I have got out of the way of 
eating. Come, let me show you something.” 

She rose with an agitated air, took up the candle and led the way 
to that narrow closet of a chamber near the i^arental sleeping-room 
in which she had slept as a girl — the room where she left the letter 
pinned on her coverlet on the morning of her flight.. 

Jeanneton leant over the bed and held the candle, shading the 
light with her too transparent hand. A child of two years old, with 
a shock of curly flaxen hair, was sleeping placidly on the red iDatch- 
work counterpane, wrapped in a ragged shawl. 

“ Yours ? ” said the mother, and not another word. 

“ Mine,” answered the daughter. “Will you take care of her, 
and bring her up as your own when I am gone ? ” 

“ Oh, but you are not going to die,” remonstrated Mere Lemoine, 
kneeling down to caress the child. “ With a bed to sleep in and 
good food, you will soon get strong again and recover your pretty 
looks. And" — who knows ? — you may find a kind husband yet who 
will pro\ude a good house for you and this gamine here.” 

“ Don’t talk nonsense, mother. You know, and I know, that I 
am dying. I have known as much for the last three months. It 
has been a slow death ; but the end is coming. Promise me not to 
send this little one to the Enfants Trouves. I could not rest in my 
grave if I thought she was to be sent there.” 

“Never, my Jeanneton ; I swear it.” 

“ God bless you, mother, fur that j^romise.” 

“ Perhaps her father may come to claim her some day,” suggested 
Mere Lemoine, dying with curiosity about her daughter’s past, now 
that she was recovered from the shock of the meeting. 

“ Never. He has other business in life than to claim his child. 
She must be your own, mother — ^yours only. And you will take 
care of her— watch her better than you watched me — you will be 
wise by experience,” said Jeanneton with a hysterical sob. 

She seemed half-sinking with fatigue ; she had walked fifteen 
miles under the burning August sky, on the sgn-baked roads, carry- 
ing her child the greater part of the way, obliged to stop to rest 
every half hour or so by the roadside, in shade or sunlight. Her 
mother undressed her, taking ofi* the dusty raiment, which was tidier 
than might have been expected under the circumstances, and sup- 
plying a ragged old petticoat and camisole of her own for the night 
gear. And then Jeanneton sunk wearily down upon the, bed beside 
her baby-girl, the bed upon which she had slept lightly enough in 
davs gone by. 

“ Oh, how sweet it is to be in bed ! ” she murmured ; “ and yet 
all my bones ache.” 

She was asleep in a few minutes, the child’s head nestling against 
her bonv shoulder, her wasted arm ; but her breathing waslaboied, 
and she started every now and then in her sleep with a murmur of 
pain. 

Happily this was one of Pere Lemoine’s late nights. It was 


56 


AN miMAELITE. 


twelve o’clock when he came in from the Faithful Pig, and he w'as 
too far gone to be told of Jeanneton’s return. That must w’ait till 
next morning. 

When morning came poor Jeanneton was in no condition to plead 
her own cause with an offended father upon earth. Only the Heav- 
enly Father of us all could understand the language which those dry 
lips babbled to-day in the delirium of high fever. The glassy eyes 
gazed upon Mere Lemoine and knew her not ; they seemed to see 
things and people far away. 

Tlie trolleur, in a sombre mood after last night’s revelry, inclined 
to see life under the blackest hue, W'as grimly pitiful of his daugh- 
ter’s dying state, and did not urge that she should be flung out of 
doors. But he spoke of her, even in her sickness, with undisguised 
bitterness. This is what such creatures bring upon themselves when 
they forsake a good home and a loving father and mother to follow 
a villain. He was furious at the idea that his wife had sworn to 
rear the child — not to send her to the Enfants Trouves, the only 
natural home for such canaille. 

“To the hospital she shall go,” he said, “before we are many 
hours older. Ore nom ! is it not enough to have reared one viper ? 
Would you let another of the same brood warm itself in our bosoms 
to sting us by-and-by, when we are old and feeble ? — and this one 
has a villain’s blood in her veins. From Toulon she came, you say, 
that trash yonder ? No doubt she has left her E^ne there — in the 
irrison. That would be his natural end. To the hospital with that 
base-born brat ! I shall take her there myself after dark.” 

His wife began to cry. What was she that such shame and misery 
should befall her? she demanded. An honest working woman, able 
to earn her pate as well as ever her husband earned his. She w^orked 
four days in the week, while he worked scarcely three, and half his 
earnings were spent at the Faithful Pig. Suppose she chose to 
bring up her dying daughter’s child ? . She had a right to spend the 
few pence the child’s maintenance would cost out of her wages at 
the laundry. And by-and-by, when she was old, the granddaughter 
would be a help to her. She defied her husband, and bade him take 
the little one to the Foundling Asylum at his peril. If he did, she 
would make the faubourg ring with the story of his cruelty. She 
stormed with such vehemence that Jacques Lemoine was fain to 
sneak out of the house and repair to a little restaurant in the Eue 
de la Eoquette, famous for its pieds de mouton a la Sainte Mene- 
hould at seven sous, and its campSche at twelve sous the litre. 

When he was gone Mere Lemoine borrowed a pinch of tea from 
a neighbor and brewed a tisane for her sick daughter, which pow’er- 
ful remedy had, strange to say, no effect on the galloping pulse or 
dry, hard skin. The grandmother washed and dressed the child, 
and let her toddle about the living-room, and even into the yard. 
She was a pretty little thing, as like what the mother was in her 
girlhood as the bud is like the flower, yet with a more exquisite deli- 
cacy of feature, pale, and with large blue eyes. She had a sprrov'- 
ful look, as if the dreamy, half-unconscious first years of life had 
brought her little happiness ; yet betimes the little face broke into 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


57 


smiles, and the wide bine eyes laughed merrily, as children’s eyes do 
laugh, at the wonderland of childish fancies and dreams. She could 
talk a little, after her baby fashion, and toddle about the yard, point- 
ing to the rays of sunlight flickering on the wall, and crying “Pretty, 
pretty,” enraptured with a kitten which graciously suftered the caress 
of her soft little arms. 

In the afternoon, the tisane having proved ineffectual. Mere 
Lemoine called one of her gossips in to look at her daughter. The 
gossip opined that the poor young woman was in a desperate way, 
and recommended Mme. Lemoine to call in an apothecary whom she 
knew of in a street hard by. The apothecary was out when Mere 
Lemoine went in search of him, and it was not until uightfall that 
he came to look at Jeanneton. He knelt down beside the palette, 
felt her j^ulse, looked at the large dim eyes, so bright yesterday, so 
dull to-day. 

“I can do nothing,” he said. “She is sinking fast. You 
had better go for a priest at once. You should have called me 
sooner.” 

Mere Lemoine, in self-justification, told the circumstances of her 
daughter’s home-coming. 

‘ ‘ Poor thing ! To walk fifteen miles in her state was simply sui- 
cide. It could only be wonderful energy of mind which enabled 
her to accomplish it. Her case must have been hopeless a month 
ago — galloiDing consumption.” 

Pere Lemoine had been so disturbed by his wife’s vehemence that 
work was naturally impossible, and it was the usual midnight hour 
when he came home, not drunk, but allume, as he and his friends 
called it. 

H > roared out an angiy greeting as he crossed the threshold and 
s wife sitting up for him, with the baby-girl asleep on her 
. , but Mere Lemoine x^ointed to the door of the little bed- 

ch .:uber where her daughter lay. 

“ Lid you not see the taper burning in the window as you came 
across the yard ? ” she said. “ Could you not guess ? ” 

“ Lead ?"” he faltered hoarsely. 

‘ ‘ Lead ! She was sensible just at the last, after the priest had 
been praying over her, and she asked for you. ‘ Kiss him for me,’ 
she said witli her last gasping breath, ‘ and tell him to forgive.’ ” 

The father opened the door softly, and looked in at that poor clay, 
marble-white in the faint light of the consecrated taper. There was 
some holy water in a saucer on the rush chair beside the .bed, and a 
little spray of box. Lemoine knelt beside the corpse, dipped the 
sprav in the holy water, and made the sign of the cross on that ice- 
cokf brow. It was years since he had made that holy sign— not 
since his mother’s dkath. A husky sob broke from his laboring 
chest, his heart beating heavily with the sense of a new pain, re- 
morse, the sense of eternal bereavement. 

He went back to the liviiig-room and sat down opposite his wife 
without a word, fehe leant across and took his kand with a tendei- 
ness which was a tiling of the past between them, and laid that 
horny hand ux^on the child’s soft satin brow. 


58 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


“ Swear that yon will not send this nameless orphan to the hospi- 
tal ! ” she said. “ Swear ! ” 

“I swear it,” he answered, bending down to kiss the baby face. 
He had not had courage to kiss that marble brow yonder, though he 
had longed to do it. 

And so a new young life began to grow and bud and Idoom in 
that dingy dwelling-place, among foul odors w^hich grew fouler 
with the passing years ; within the sound of loud foul tongues which 
changed one slang for another and one form of blasphemy for an- 
other as time went by, but which never ceased to offend earth and 
heaven. The child’s life was not one of sunshine in that shady 
place. For the first years, while the memory of the mother’s early 
death wus still fresh, a sohening influence upon the minds of Pere 
and Mere Lemoine, while the fairy-like loveliness and beguiling 
W'ays of childhood made the granddaughter a kind of plaything, the 
little one was treated with indulgence, was kissed and fondled, fed 
on the best morsel out of the dish, allow'ed to occupy the warmest 
corner of the hearth, the softest i3illow reserved for her golden head. 
The child was completely happy in those days, knew not that there 
was any fairer place on earth than the Rue Sombreuil, loved the 
murky old house — passing old after forty years’ occupation, the 
cozy hearth, the naiTow little room in which her mother had died, 
the neighbors’ children, her playmates. She was a bright, joyous 
little creature in her childhood, but always slim and delicate ‘in 
form, and of a snowdrop fairness. She had been baptized Jean- 
nette, but her grandfather called her Paquerette, his Easter daisy, 
on account of her pale cheeks, blanched in that snow’y w’ell where 
her life was spent. She came very soon to be called Paquerette by 
every one. As she grew to girlhood it was the only name she knew. 
When she was seven years old she was sensible enough to be trusted 
upon an errand, handy enough to dust and sweep the hearth. By 
the time she was nine she had learned to be very useful ; and then a 
change came o’er the spirit of her dream, and the pains and penal- 
ties of life among the i^oor began in real earnest for this little pale 
child called Paquerette. Once accustomed to make her useful, the 
grandparents very soon began to treat her as a drudge and to lose 
their temper with her at the slightest provocation. Any little mis- 
take in any errand, any neglect of an order from her elders, brought 
upon her the harshest treatment ; nay, errors that w’ere none of hers 
brought punishment upon her guiltless head. If the grocer gave 
her a quarter of a pound of bad coffee, or the w-oman at tlie cremerie 
supplied a pat of rank butter, it wus Paquerette who suffered. She 
should not be such an imbecile as to take whatever those thieves 
chose to foist upon her. She had a nose, had she not, to smell but- 
ter so rancid that one could have detected it a street off? Was she 
to be a fool all her life ? — for example. 

Sorrow's tliero w'ere many in that orphan girlhood ; joys there were 
none. Aged by anxieties, Paquerette at eleven cared no longer for 
the play of the common troop of children wFo made one band in 
the big house. It w^as no longer a delight to her to play hide-and- 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


r)9 


seek on the winding stone stair and the long narrow passages with 
noisy boys and girls — to race about the yard dragging an old stew- 
})an or a wooden shoe for a cart, or to play at being the postilion de 
Longjumeaii, with four small boys for her team. She had taken 
upon herself all the cares of life at twelve years of age, and had bid- 
den farewell to childhood audits fancies, its sweet imaginary joys, 
its cheap blisses, in which a dirty common stair can do duty for a 
mountain pass, the embrasure of a door for a feudal castle, a sauce- 
pan lid for the shield of Bayard or Achilles, an old broken chair for 
a royal carriage, and a broomstick for a prancing thoroughbred. 

Nothing moved Paquerette except music, and for that she had a 
greedy ear. Let an organ-man stray into the yard and grind a 
Avaltz, and Paquerette would throw aside her broom, or leave her 
tub of dish water, and go waltzing round the dirty courtyard on the 
points of her slim young feet — light as any fawn in the glades of Sfc. 
Germain or Fontainebleau. But even such a joy as this was of the 
rarest ; Paris was not rich in barrel organs in those days, and the 
grindei’s knew that the Rue Sombreuil was not likely to give a rich 
harvest. 

It never occurred to P^re or Mt^sre Lemoine that the monotonous 
grubbing existence which was good enough for them was hardly 
suitable for the dawn of life ; that this pale flower which they had 
sworn to rear was languishing and fading in their charge. In "sober 
truth, Paquerette w^ould have been far better off at the hospital for 
nameless children than she was in that ground-floor den in the Rue 
Sombreuil. State charity would have lodged her better, clad her 
better, taught her better, provided her with more recreation, and in 
every way been a better parent to her than these of her own flesh 
and blood, who let her wallow in ignorance, shutting her off alike 
from all knowledge of the glorious beauty of earth and from all 
hope in the infinite joys of heaven. 

And thus, a drudge and a scapegoat for two elderly people, with 
whom the world did not go over well, and who grew a little less 
amiable with the passing of the years, Paquerette endured the 
monotony of a joyless existence till slie was seventeen. Very child 
in ignorance of all good, very woman in knowledge of evil. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

“she stretcheth out her hand to the poor.” 

It was Sunday, and all the world of the Faubourg St. Antoine 
was drifting toward that wider world outside the walls of Paris 
where there were fields and gardens, parks and woods, and where 
the river seemed to take a new color as it flowed between the ver- 
dure-clad banks. Everybody Avas holiday-making, except that one 
little family in the murky, dusty ground-floor, looking into the pent- 
up yard— everybody else in the world was happy and idle and gay, 
as it seemed to Paquerette ; but for her Sunday made no difference. 


60 


AN miTMAELITE. 


Neither the trollenr nor his wife ever went to church, or pnt on 
Sunday clothes, or went holiday-making in the afternoon, like their 
neighbors. They had no Sunday clothes ; nor had Paquerette. The 
trolleur’s only notion of a holiday was to go earlier than usual to The 
Faithful Pig, and to stay later, and drink more. His wife sat at 
home, and hugged her misery, and drank secretly. So that when 
P6re Lemoine came home from his noisy revehies steeped in cam- 
peche or vitriol, but as firm on his legs as a granite pillar, he found 
the wife in a silent and stony condition, which might mean a digni- 
fied sullenness, and which the trolleur never troubled himself to 
interrogate. It was enough for him that there were no wearisome 
remonstrances, that no vessels of hot or cold water were ever flung 
at his head, as was the fashion in some domiciles he knew of under 
that very roof ; that he was allowed to roll into his wretched straw 
bed, and court slumber in i^eace. If any one had questioned him 
about his wife, he would have replied that she was one of the soberest 
women, only a little given to sulks when he stayed out after mid- 
night. 

Paquerette knew better, or knew worse, about her grandmother. 
She had been sent too often to replenish Mere Lemoine’s brandy 
bottle, at a little wine shop in the close and fetid alley round the 
corner — the wretched lane where the waste from the dyer’s w^orkshop 
made pools of crimson water, that lay like blood-stains in the muddy 
hollows, beside a gutter half choked with refuse cabbage leaves, egg- 
shells, and an occasional dead cat. In this unholy place, at a dark 
little den, down a couple of steps, Paquerette was a familiar visitor. 
The x^atron filled her bottle without waiting for her to ask for what 
she wanted. Sometimes she had the money ready to hand him, 
sometimes she had to ask for indulgence till next time, and the 
X^atron was fierce and exx3ressed himself harshly. Once she had 
trembled at that wolfish ferocity — the dcox^ harsh voice and strong- 
language ; but custom hardened her, and she came to understand 
that those terrible oaths, that bass thunder, only meant that she 
must not go there too often without the money in her hand. 

It was Sunday, a brilhant morning in the middle of May, and 
Paquerette sat on a broken-down wooden stool in the yard, just be- 
side the door of that room which w\as workshox?, kitche'n, and living 
room, all in one, for the trolleur’s family. It was between ten and 
eleven o’clock. The bells of Notre-Dame were ringing and P^re 
Lemoine and his wife were still asleep in the den at the back of the 
sitting-room. They always slex)t later on Sunday mornings. Tliat 
was the one difference by which they honored the Sabbath. Paque- 
rette had been to fetch half a x^ound of sausage and a x^int of mussels 
from the shops on the other side of the street. She had made the 
coffee, which was simmering ux^on a handful of charcoal on the wide 
bare black hearth, and now she was sitting listlessly in the yard, 
looking up at the blue bright sky, as out of a well, hardly hoping to 
see more of its beauty than she could see thus, sitting at her door, 
pent in by walls which were as the walls of a prison. Had not her 
whole life been spent in prison, hemmed round and shut in bv xiov- 
erty, ignorance, neglect, cruelty, helplessness ? The girls in xii'isons 


A N miMA ELITE. 0 1 

and reformatories are better cared for than ever . Paqnerette had 
been. 

She sat looking np at the sky. Sometimes her eyes fell lower, 
and she looked at the many windows staring down at her from the 
four sides of that stone wall like so many eyes. Each window was 
alive, as it were, and had its peculiar significance. The tall dilapi- 
dated old house teemed with human life. At some windows clothes 
were hanging out to diy ; at some — these only the few among the 
many — there were flow^ers. Here and there hung a bird-cage. 
Those windows were the cleanest which had birds or flowers, and 
Paquerette fancied life must be sweeter and more peaceful in .the 
room that was scented with yonder pots of wall-flowers, dark green 
leaves and blossoms of gold and crimson. Some windows were, 
shaded with a bright-colored curtain, across another hung a limp 
and dirty rag, which hinted at a filthy interior. Children were 
hanging out of some windows, women were looking out of others. 
Before one a man was shaving himself in an airy costume of shirt 
and braces. At another a girl was peeling potatoes. Fragments of 
song, fragments of speech fell into the silence of the yard below ; 
and froni an open window high up came, a gush of melody, the sere- 
nade from “Don Pasquale ” whistled divinely by a young honest 
j)ainter who lived under the tiles. Paquerette knew hardly any one 
to speak to in the thickly peopled house. There were some who 
were old inhabitants like the Lemoines, who had squatted down in 
their one or two rooms, among their poor scraps of second-hand fur- 
niture, or their heir-looms brought from some far-away coirnf ry vil- 
lage, a quarter of a century ago, and had been content to grow old' 
with the house, which was rotting visibly, no one spending any 
money upon its rejrair. Others came and went, and were like the 
shifting figures in a kaleidoscope, and yet not the same. Paquerette 
was too shy to make friends. There were merry girls in some of the 
rooms — girls who worked hard all day, yet were full of talk and laugh- 
ter when they came home in the evening. Two, three, some times 
four, lived together in a small apartment — sisters, cousins, friends. 

There were a pair of sisters who lived behind that window with 
the wall-flowers, and who shared their room with the cousin older 
than themselves. This little menage Paquerette had observed with 
lieculiar interest. They seemed so happy. They had such an air of 
irerfect contentment in their 'work and their lives, their simple pleas- 
ures and humble home. She saw them go out in the morning when 
she was doing her housework, before mother or father had emerged 
from the inner den yonder. She saw them go to Mass in the early 
morning, she saw them run in again for a hurried breakfast, and 
then off to work. The two sisters worked for a third-rate dress- 
malcer in the Marais ; the cousin worked in a bedding warehouse 
near the Boulevard St. Michel, and spent^all her days in stabbing 
mattresses with a big needle. They were always neatly clad. On 
Sundays they looked like young ladies, and, if the weather were 
flue, tliey always went out in the afternoon with their friends, com- 
ing home, after dark under masculine escort, but in a sober, respect- 
able fashion that gave no occasion for scandal. 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


()2 

On some rare occasions, gratefully remembered by Paquerette, 
tliese girls bad stopped to sj^eak to her as they passed by. Pauline, 
the youngest and merriest, had asked her why the old people never 
took her out at Christmas time and the new year, for instance, when 
the boulevards were well worth going to see. One need not have any ^ 
money to spend. Only to look at the stalls of toys and jewelry, and 
the lights and the people was an evening’s j^leasure. Paquerette 
shook her head sadly. The grandfather and grandmother would 
not walk so far. They had seen all that, and it was worth nothing, 
the same thing year after year, they said. 

“Ah, but you have never seen,” cried Pauline. “Can old peo- 
ple forget that they have ever been young ? Besides, it is not the 
same every year. There are always new toys, new trinkets, new bon- 
bons, new words, new jokes. No new year is quite the same as last 
year. And if it were, there is time to forget between whiles. Lights 
and music and hapi:)y faces are always fresh. You shall go with us 
next Christmas.” 

Paquerette gave a sigh of rapture. 

“ Oh, 1 should so like,” she said, “ but you would be ashamed of 
me in my old clothes.” 

“ But your clothes cannot always be old,” answered Pauline, with 
her bright laugh. “ Y’ou can save your next new gown for Christ- 
mas.” 

Paquerette crimsoned and hung her head, but said never a word. 
The truth was that she had never had a new gown in her life. Mi^re 
Lemoine had amicable relations with a snuffy old woman in the city, 
who dealt in second-hand clothes, and it was from the very refuse, 
the offal of this old hag’s stock in trade, that Paquerette’s wardrobe 
was occasionally replenished. The two old women drank their litre 
of little blue or their measure of three-six together, and over their 
cups debated the i^rice of those few rags which Madame Druge, the 
dealer, flung together in a dirty heap upon the floor. Pfiquerette 
wore anything — a wine-stained velvet jacket, the nap crushed and 
the edges frayed, a garment that had grown old before its time, like 
its first owner, now riding in a carriage, anon rolling in the gutter, 
the cast-off livery of vice — or a cotton skirt that had grown thin in 
the wear and tear of honest labor. Paquerette had neither voice nor 
choice in the matter, 

“ Why do you never mend your clothes, child ?” asked the oldest 
of the three girls one day, a tall, stout, young woman, who w^as 
called big Lisbeth — a broad-shouldered, strong-minded, outspoken 
damsel of eight-and-twenty, the soul of honesty and good nature. 
She gave P3,<]uerette a little friendly tap upon the cheek. “ My 
child, why are you always in rags ? ” she asked reproachfully ; and 
then Paquerette owned with tears that she had no needles and 
thread, and that she had^never been taught to sew. This state of 
things was too horrible. Big Lisbeth took the girl straight to her 
apartment, the room with the wall-flowers in the window, a room 
with two beds in alcoves, shaded by white muslin curtains, everv- 
thing neat and clean as the palm of your hand. Paquerette looked 
about her, dazzled by the prettiness of the room. It was the first 


rliV" ISmiAELlTE. 


63 


decent or orderly room slie had ever entered. She could not im- 
agine that a duchess would have anything better. The mahogany 
commode, shining with polish, the white jug and basin, the bunch 
of flowers in a glass vase on the mantelpiece, the portraits of Louis 
Idiilippe and Marie Amelie neatly nailed against the white-washed 
wall, and between them a colored print of the Holy Family, with a 
white and gilt china benitier just below it. On a shelf by the fire- 
place there were white cups and saucers— ah, how clean ! — and an 
old copper coffee-pot which shone like a jewel. As compared with 
that human pigsty below, this room was as the heavenly Jerusalem 
with its jasper walls and gates of pearl comi^ared with the foulest 
city on earth. 

Lisbeth took out her needle-case and gave Paquerette her first 
lesson in sewing. The girl was very awkward. Her fingers were 
unacquainted with the use of a needle, and the cotton skirt was like 
tinder — the stuff broke away from the needle. But Lisbeth was very 
patient, and the long slit which had attracted her attention in the 
yard below got cobbled together somehow, while Paquerette ac- 
qiiired some rudimentary ideas as to the use of a needle and thread. 
Lisbeth made her a present of a couple of needles, an old brass 
thimble, and half a reel of cotton — the first gift of any kind which 
the girl had ever received from any one outside her own family. 
She promised that she would use the needles and mend her clothes 
always in future. The thimble was a difficulty. She doubted if 
she should ever accustom herself to the use of that curious instru- 
ment, but she promised to try. 

“Why do you wear a velvet jacket and a cotton skirt?” asked 
Lisbeth, bluntly. “ That does not go well together. Besides, 
velvet for working people ! That does not look respectable. ” 

Paquerette hung her head. It was a small, pretty-shaped head, 
like a rosebud on its stalk, and had a trick of drooping when 
Paquerette was troubled or confused. 

“ Grandmother buys them,” she faltered. 

“Grandmother is an old fool,” exclaimed Lisbeth, angrily. 

She was indignant with that old trolleur and his wife for bringing 
up their grandchild so vilely. They thought her nothing. She sat 
in the sun half the day, rolling her thumbs and looking up at the 
sky. She had grown up as a pagan in a Christian city, with the 
bells of Notre-Dame ringing within earshot. She could do nothing 
useful for herself, or for other people, except cook and clean up a 
little, in her poor untaught way, for that wretched old man and his 
wife. She W’as a regular Cinderella ; and there are no good fairies 
nowadays to come to Cinderella’s relief. 

Paquerette had never heard the story of Cinderella, or she might 
have thought of her to-day as she sat gazing idly up at the sky, 
while all the world was going forth to its pleasure. She had no 
hope of going any further than the yard, or of seeing any more of 
the sky than she saw’ now. Her hands hung listlessly at her sides ; 
her head leant wearily against the dirty stone wall behind her. She 
was slipshod, slovenly, half-wushed, with her hair rolled up in a 
loose knot that seemed too big for her head. 


04 


AN ISTIMAELITE. 


She was sitting thus, hopeless, idle, unfriended, when the three 
young women — the demoiselles Benoit — came back from Mass. 
This picture of forlorn youth struck them all three at once. 

“ That poor child ! Just look at her ! I should like to massacre 
those wicked old people,” muttered Lisbeth, who always used strong 
language. 

“She looks the picture of miseiy,” said Toinette, with a compas- 
sionate sigh. 

“If we could only do anything to cheer her a little,” murmured 
Pauline. 

After all, the race of good fairies is not quite extinct. They are 
human, the good fairies of the present, and their power is limited. 
They cannot turn a melon into a Lord Mayor’s coach or a lizard into 
a 2 >rize footman ; but, ah me ! how much can be done, if people will 
only do it, with a wand called charity ! The good Samaritan, who 
went out of his way and took some trouble to help his fellow-creat- 
ure, is a grander ideal than Cinderella’s fairy, who had the com- 
mand of all Wonderland, and never took any trouble at all. 

‘ ‘ What a fine day, Paquerette ! Are not your old j^eople going to 
take you out this afternoon ? ” 

The girl shook her head. 

“ They never go into the country, and grandmother never goes 
out till after dark,” she said piteously. 

“ What foolish peojDle ! We are all going to Vincennes to a i^ic- 
nic. Have you ever been there ? ” 

“I have never been anywhere,” said Paquerette, with a reiDi’oach- 
ful air. 

There was a kind of cruelty in asking her such a question. Surely 
they must know that she was never taken out for her pleasure. 

“ And you have never been at a jncnic? ” asked Pauline. 

Paquerette answered dumbly, only by a shake of her head. The 
tears came into her eyes. Why did they tease her by such silly ques- 
tions ? Why could they not take their 2 :)leasure and let her alone ? 

The three girls lingered in the yard a few paces from Paquerette, 
jDutting their heads together and whisi>ering. 

“We could lend her a gown and a cap,” said Pauline. 

‘ ‘ It would not cost much td take her. Ten sous for the omnibus 
there and back. There is enough in the basket for all.” 

‘^If Madame Morice would not mind,” speculated Toinette. 

“ Why should Madame Morice mind ? The girl is well behaved ; 
she will interfere with nobody.” 

A little more whispering ; and then Pauline, the youngest of these 
three lowly graces — she who had been the first to sjDeak to Paquerette 
— went over to the lonely child and said : 

“Would you like to go to Vincennes with us this afternoon? 
We’ll take you, if your peo23le will let you go. I can lend you a 
gown. We are jDretty much of a size, I think.” 

Paquerette started u^) from her rickety little stool, crimson with 
wonder. 

“ You don’t mean it ! ” she cried, clasi)ing her hands. “ Oh, you 
couldn’t be so kind ! ” 


AN ISmiAELITE. 


65 


“Nonsense, child, it’s no great matter,” answered Lisbeth, in her 
frank loud voice. “ We shall be very glad to have yon with ns, 
poor little thing. Bnn and speak to yonr old peoj)le — there is no 
time to be lost— and then come np to onr room. Yon know the 
way.” 

“Oh, yes, mademoiselle. I have not forgotten yonr goodness in 
teaching me to sew.” 

The three girls went indoors, while Paqnerette ran into the den 
where her grandfather was taking his coffee at the table near the 
fireplace, in his morning dress of shirt, tronsers, and slippers. Ho 
looked as if he had not washed or combed his hair for a week, bnt 
he was' only saving himself np for a swimming bath by the Pont 
Nenf, an indulgence 'which he generally gave himself on a Sunday 
afternoon. He was not qnite so bad as he seemed. 

He lolled at ease in the dilapidated old Voltaire, his naked feet 
half ont of his tattered old slippers and reposing on a chair opj^o- 
site. He sipjDed his coffee and gazed dreamily at his work — a bon- 
henr dn-jonr in amboyna wood, richly inlaid — a work of art. The 
charabia was to come for it to-morrow morning and take it abont to 
the dealers till he got P^re Lemoine his price, ont of which M. 
Charabia natnrally took a handsome commission. There were abont 
half a dozen honrs’ work still wanted for those finishing touches 
which wonld make the little bnrean perfect, and that labor would 
most likely be pnt off till the very last. Pere Lemoine wonld 
dawdle away his Sabbath in Inxnrions idleness and stroll homeward 
after midnight soaked in -vilest spirit, tres bon zig, to snatch two or 
three honrs’ feverish sleep and then np and to work at earliest dawn 
by the light of a tallow candle, so as to be ready for the Anvergnat. 

The coffee w^as good, and the grandfather was amiably disposed 
to poor little Cinderella. 

“ Come and have yonr breakfast, child,” he said. “I began to 
think yon had taken the key of the fields.” 

“ I shouldn’t know where to look for the fields if I had the key,” 
she answered ; and then she came round to the back of the old man’s 
chair and leaned over him. “ Grandfather, the demoiselles Benoit 
have asked me to go to Vincennes with them this afternoon — di- 
rectly. May I go ? ” 

The old man shrugged his shonlders, and gave a long whistle, ex- 
pressive of snrprise. Ho knew of three girls on the fonrth floor, and 
that they were very respectable yonng persons. He wondered that 
they should take any notice of such a ragamuffin as his grand- 
dan ghter. 

“ Will it cost any money ? ” he asked, cautiously ; “ for, if it will, 
you can’t go. The sack is empty — not a sou till the charabia gets 
me a price for my bureau yonder.” 

“ They did not say anything about money. They offered to take 
me to a picnic, that was all, and Mademoiselle Pauline will lend me 
one of her go-wiis.” 

‘ ‘ One of her gowns ! What a duchess ! If I had two coats one 
of them would be always au clou (with the pawnbroker). Well, 
you can go, child. If those girls are simple enough to pay for you. 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


r>6 

I 3 ee no objection to yon having a day’s ]3leasnre. Yonr pocket will 
be empty, so there is no chance of yonr being swindled by any of 
yonr co-operative dodges ; or else the word picnic has a sound I don’t 
like. It means handing round a jdate after dinner, and for every 
man to pay his scot.” 

“ Bon jonr, le p^re ! ” cried Paqnerette. 

She did not give the trollenr time to change his mind. She ran 
across the yard to the steep black staircase in the corner — a staircase 
npon which the Benoit apartments oi^ened, a terrible staircase in 
trnth, an air-shaft for all insalnbrions odors, a dark well wdiose 
greasy walls were thick with the grime of half a centniy, an atmo- 
sphere of infection, rank, sour, musty, tainted with every variety of 
foulness, animal, vegetable, mineral. 

Paqnerette was inured to such odors. She took hold of the greasy 
rope which hung against the slimy wall, and served as baluster- 
rail, and ran lightly up the corkscrew stair, hustled by, or hustling 
three or four blouses and one frock coat, who were hurrying down, 
eager to be off and away for their day’s amusement. The door on 
the fourth landing was open, and the demoiselles Benoit were wait- 
ing for her. 

‘ ‘ Come, Paquere^e, we want to catch the one o’clock omnibus, ” 
cried big Lisbeth ; and then the door was shut, and the three girls 
began their iwotcgee’s toilet. 

They meant to do the thing thoroughly, having once taken it in 
hand. Lisbeth was one of the most thorough-going young women 
in Paris, a workwoman such as there are few, and eveiything she 
did was done well and earnestly. She had trained the two young 
cousins in the same spirit. In the midst of poverty, surrounded by 
dirt, slovenliness, drunkenness, and all evil habits, they had kept 
their lives pure and clean ; and the place they inhabited was an oasis 
of purity in the murky old house. 

All three girls stood for a minute or two looking at Paqnerette, as 
if she had been a work of art. Was she pretty ? They hardly knew, 
but they knew that she might be made to look nice, smart, genteel. 
There was an air of elegance in the slim fragile figure, tlie swan-like 
throat, the slight droop of the head, which the Benoit damsels, sub- 
stantially built, felt rather than understood. But of that order of 
beauty which was appreciated in the Faubourg St. Antoine Paque- 
retto had not a trace. The sparkling eyes, the beaute du diable, 
fresh complexion, girlish plumimess, were not here. There was 
rather a look of sickliness, a waxen pallor and an attenuation which, 
from a conventional point of view, was fatal to beauty. 

Instructed by her friends, Puquerette plunged her head and shoul- 
ders into a shallow tub, and made such use of soap and water as she 
had never done before, merging flushed and breathlessly from this 
novel ordeal, to scrub herself vigorously with a large "huckaback 
towel, a very coarse, common towel, but, oh! how delightfully 
clean. The flavor of cleanliness, the fresh odors of abundant soap 
and water, were new things in Paquerette’s experience. 

“Sit down, child, and let me do your hail-,” said Lisbeth, with 
bluff authority. 


AN miMAELITE. 


67 


“ Oh ! mademoiselle,” murmured the girl, overcome with shame 
at the thought of her rough, uukempt locks. 

Happily she had a habit of dipping her head in the wretched 
cracked little basin every morning when she washed her face, for 
coolness’ sake, so the rough head was fairly clean. What a mass of 
soft brown hair fell about the child’s shoulders when Lisbeth had 
drawn out two rusty sp)ikes of hair-pins — a soft palish brown, not 
auburn or golden or chestnut — a shadowy veil of hne soft hair which 
fell round the thin wan face like an evening cloud. 

While Lisbeth brushed and combed the long, thick mass of hair, 
Pauline and Toinette consulted in a corner as to the gown they would 
lend the orphan, and finally decided on a white cotton with little 
pink spots, clean and fresh from the ironing-board. Girls who are 
good starchers and ironers, and are not afraid of the public laundry, 
can afford to wear clean clothes. The hairdressing was finished by 
this time, the soft brown tresses were brushed back of the small 
head ; and now Paquerette, casting the slough of her poverty, put 
on a petticoat of Toinette’s and Pauline’s pink-spotted cotton. 

Pauline had prided heiself on her small waist until to-day, but 
her gown was ever so much too big for Paquerette. It had to be 
taken off and the bodice taken in nearly three inches with a few 
vigorous stitches on each side of the waist, and then it was put on 
again and finished off with a neat linen collar. A dainty little mus- 
lin cap was pinned on the smooth brown hair, and then Paquerette, 
who had submitted very patiently to be turned and twisted about 
like a doll in the process of dressing, was to be rewarded by the 
sight of her transformed image in the little looking-glass. Not un- 
til the last touch was given to the picture would the three girls al- 
low so much as a peep at the glass. But now, when the last pin 
had been adjusted, Pauline brought the glass and held it before Pci- 
querette’s astonished eyes. 

What did she see there ? What kind of image greeted her curi- 
ous gaze ? A grisette ? A grisette only as for cotton frock and white 
cap. That shy, slender, fragile, ethereal creature had nothing else 
of the grisette. The type was patrician— that kind of face marked 
the vanishing jwint of an aristocratic line — a race dying out, atten- 
uated, but lovely in its decay. 

This was beauty assuredlv, but the beauty of a white woodland 
flower, frail, faint, the brief bloom and glory of a day. The soft 
gray eyes — dark, pensive — the small Greek nose and delicate chin, 
with its receding slope which meant weakness of character, the pal- 
lid complexion just relieved by the blush of rose-tint of the lips, 
and the pencilling of the eyebrows, all tliese made up a kind of beau- 
ty, but not a tvpe to strike the vulgar eye. Paquerette was just 
good-looking enough to pass in a crowd, as the vulgar say, and just 
the kind of a girl to be passed unmarked and unadmired by the 
crowd. Yet the demoiselles Benoit felt that there was a charm in 
that pale face and slender foi-m— a charm which was better than vul- 
<^ar beauty. 

“ What do you think of yourself now, Paquerette ? ” asked Pau- 
line. 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


OS 

But the girl would not express any opinion on this i)oint. She 
had only words of gratitude for the three good fairies. 


CHAPTER IX. 

“as snow in SmiMEE.” 

The Benoit girls and their protegee set out for the omnibus office, 
talking, laughing, intensely happy. Paquerette had never ridden in 
an omnibus till to-day. Cinderella could not have been more de- 
lighted with her enchanted coach than this waif of St. Antoine with 
the frowzy red omnibus which jolted and rattled over the stones of 
the shabby boulevard. There is not much beauty in the road from 
the Place de la Bastille to Yincennes ; but to Paquerette it was rapt- 
ure to feel the movement of the carriage, and to see the hapjw- 
looking people in their Sunday clothes — the children, the mothers, 
the workingmen ; the noise and bustle and ferment of a fine warm 
Sunday, the first Sunday of summer, when all the world was at its 
best, and when all the ants in the ant-hill of St. Antoine had come 
out of dark holes and corners to bask in the sun.. 

As they were jolted along, Pauline told Paquerette what they were 
going to do. They were to meet their friends at the fort — M. and 
Mme. Morice — old friends who had known the departed M. Benoit 
and Gustave his brother, Lisbeth’s father, in years gone by, when 
they all lived in a little bourg in Normandy, not far from Rouen. 
Mme. Morice had succeeded to a small inheritance left her by a 
bachelor uncle, a well-to-do blacksmith, and with this modest for- 
tune she and her husband had come to Paris and had set up a small 
grocery shoj^ at Menilmontant. The rents were so high in all the 
good quarters of Paris that they had been constrained to establish 
themselves in a district which left much to be desired. But these 
Morices were exceptional people. They brought the temperate and 
industrious habits of tlie province to Paris, and did not allow them- 
selves to be corrupted by the great city. Their little shop at Menil- 
montant flourished exceedingly. The two rooms behind the shop 
were the pink of neatness, and their one child, a boy of seven, was 
a model of obedience and good manners. SuiTounded by so much 
that was foul and evil, they had contrived to keep themselves un- 
tainted by the infection of vice. They were the only intimate friends 
the Benoit girls could reckon upon in Paris ; but for acquaintance — 
the come-and-go society of Sundays and holidays — the Benoits had 
all Mme. Morice’s circle, which consisted of the most respectable 
citizens of her quarter. 

The Morices were sauntering up and down with half a dozen 
friends in front of the fort when the four girls arrived. There was 
a Mile. Gilberte, the dressmaker, a very stylish person of five and 
thirty ; and there was Mme. Beck, the clear-starcher, a matron whoso 
purity of attire spoke well for her laundry work ; also Mme. Beck’s 
son, a flaxen youth of nineteen, with not a v/ord to say for himself 


AN I8HMAELITE. 


69 


and with an embarrassing habit of blushing violently and goggling 
his eyes if he were looked at. There were M. and Mme. Oallonge, 
from the smart little boucherie opposite Mme. Morice’s shop ; and, 
lastly, there was a tall, broad-shouldered and very handsome mon- 
sieur whom the Benoit girls had never seen till to-day. 

He wore a blue blouse and a workman’s cap, but one could see at 
a glance that his outer garments were spotless, and that his linen, as 
indicated by the white collar and wristbands, was that of a gentle- 
man. Morice and Beck were both in broadcloth and stovepipe hats, 
and Morice had gone so far as to incase his fingers in a pair of stiff 
yellow leather gloves, and yet this man in the blue blouse looked 
more like a gentleman than either of them. His movements had an 
ease, his head was carried with a lofty grace which those others had 
not. He was strolling by Mme. Morice’s side, smoking his short 
pijie, silent and thoughtful, as the four girls approached. 

There was much cordiality in the greeting given to the Benoit girls 
by all the company except the man in blue, who was evidently a 
stranger. Lisbeth jDresented Paquerette to Mme. Morice as a little 
neighbor she had brought with her, and that was all the introduction 
needed. The grocer’s wife smiled at her with a comfortable, protect- 
ing air, and munnured to Lisbeth that the child was tres gentille, 
and then the gentlemen of the company took the baskets and they 
all strolled off to find the prettiest part of the wood. 

While they were walking thither Mme. Morice, who was a great 
gossip, told big Lisbeth about the stranger in the blue blouse. He 
was from Brittany, a stonemason, engaged on the fortifications yon- 
der, and he had lately moved into an apartment on the front floor 
above her shop. He was a very superior person — sober, saving, and 
almost a gentleman in his ways. He sat up late at night studying 
. sometimes. She had seen his lamp from the road when she and her 
husband came home from a theatre ; but let him study ever so late, 
he was always off to his work in the early morning. She had heard 
that he was a stanch Republican, and had grand ideas about the 
equal rights of man. She had made his acquaintance through her 
little boy Adolphe, who had been nearly ran over, when this good 
fellow, Ishmael, picked him up from under the very feet of a pair of 
wagon horses. 

“Can ydh wonder that I have liked him ever since? ’’she said. 
“ Morice cultivates his society for the sake of his conversation — they 
are of the same way of thinking, and neither of them trusts too 
securely the Prince President or this new law which the Chamber 
l^assed the other day.” 

Lisbeth was no Republican. She had liked and admired the Citi- 
zen King and his family— that pious, charitable queen, those prin- 
cesses, fond of sculpture and poetry, needlework, and all pure 
feminine arts. The revolution of ’48 had seemed to Lisbeth an un- 
mitigated calamity, and the people who made it were devils in her 
eyes. She admired Prince Louis Napoleon for the sake of those 
glorious traditions which are as fairy tales to the children of France. 
She knew her Beranger, and in the songs of the national poet had 
learned the liistory of the empire that was gone. If those people 


70 


AN miMAELITE. 


who prophesied the coming of a new Emi^ire were right, so much 
the better. Anything was better than a Kepublic, which seemed a 
colorless, hopeiess kind of government ; a Chamber always at log- 
gerheads ; a hock without a shepherd. 

Mme. Morice and her party found a little glade, a somewhat 
secluded spot, in which to picnic, and, as eveiybody seemed jiretty 
shai’ij set by three o’clock, they all sat down at that hour to 023en the 
baskets and arrange the meal. The gentlemen of the party furnished 
the wine, and some limonade gazeuse had been brought by the 
thoughtful Morice for those ladies who might not care for such 
strong drinks as ma'yon or ordinaire. It was a very sober party, but 
very cheerful notwithstanding, with much talk and laughter ; and 
the paucity of accommodation in the way of knives and forks, plates 
and glasses, gave occasion to many small jokes of an ancient and in- 
nocent character. Thus big Lisbeth and the stonemason, on sharing 
their meal off a common plate, were called the manage Ishmael, and 
various insinuations of a matrimonial kind were levelled at tliem, 
all which Lisbeth bore with strong-minded placidity. But when 
Paquerette presently sipj^ed a little wine out of the stonemason’s 
glass, the first jesting remark made the pale face flush crimson. 

“ She is so shy, la pauvrette,” said Pauline to Mme. Morice. “A 
word frightens her.” 

“ She is rather pretty,” said madame, “ and she has the air of a 
demoiselle. ” 

“ You would not have said that if you had seen her this morning 
before we took her in hand,” replied Pauline, with a natural jjride 
in her work. 

Before they had finished dinner a gray-haired old organ-player 
came and perched himself near them and began to drone out his old 
airs — “ The Carnival of Venice,” “ La ci darem,” “Non piu mesta,” 
and a Avaltz or two. The waltz tunes inspired the little party. Why 
should not one have a dance ? — just for digestion. A word and the 
thing is done. The plates were thrust into the empty baskets ; 
every one was on foot ; pai-tners were chosen ; Paquerette found 
herself, she hardly knew how, gliding round in a circle, supported 
by the strong arm of M. Ishmael. The shy youth with eyes a, fieur 
de tete summoned courage to invite Pauline. ^ 

Paquerette had never learned to dance, but in these light, slim 
slij^s of girlhood dwells the very siDirit of motion. Like an iEolian 
harp which has hung in the stillness of a closed chamber, silent for 
years, but, let a summer wind breathe on the strings, and the music 
comes ; so with Paquerette. At the sound of the Savoyard’s organ, 
with the sense of a strong arm encircling her waist,'feet moving 
with hers to the beat of the music, her feet slid lightly over the dry 
close turf, and eveiy movement of that slender figure and those lit- 
tle feet was supple, graceful, harmonious, as in a dancer of highest 
artistic training. There are some arts that come by instinct to 
certain people, and Pacpierette was a born dancer. 

“Hurrah!” cried the middle-aged lookers-on, applauding the 
three couples, but with their eyes on Ishmael and his partner ; and 


AN ISmiAELITE. 71 

‘‘ Hurrah ! ” echoed Ishmael, drawing his partner a little closer to 
his breast, light-hearted, elated, he scarce knew why. 

The other two couples stopped, breathless and panting, and stood 
aloof out of the little circle of sunburnt green sward ; but Ishmael 
and his partner waltzed on, unconscious of spectators, feeling like 
two birds with outspread wings hovering in a world of light and 
air, steeped in blue sky and sunshine, far above this common earth. 

When they at last came to a stop the girl’s head dropped upon her 
partner’s shoulders in a sudden giddiness. It seemed to her as if 
they had swooped down from that blue, bright world, and that it was 
the shock of touching the earth again which made her senses reel 
and her sight, grow dim. 

She recovered herself almost immediately, and released herself 
from Ishmael’s suiDporting arm. 

“Thank you,” she said naively. “How delicious dancing is ! ” 

“ And how exquisitely you dance ! ” answered Ishmael, looking at 
her with eyes which seemed to her to glow and dazzle like the sun- 
rays that meet on a burning-glass. 

“Please do not laugh at me, monsieur ; I never danced with any 
one in my life until to-day. I have danced by myself in the yard 
sometimes when there was an organ, but of course that is different.” 

“I am very glad of that,” said .shmael. 

“ Glad of what ? ” 

“ That I am the first partner you ever danced with. That makes 
a kind of beginning in life, does it not, a kind of landmark ? And 
now shall we go for a little walk? You are breathless still. We 
must not dance any more just yet.” 

He offered his arm, through which she slipped her little ungloved 
hand, after an instant or so of hesitation. She had never taken any 
man’s arm before. Miranda in her desert island could hardly have 
been more innocent of the manners and ways of the outer world. 
Ishmael looked down at her wonderingly, admiringly. No Joan of 
Arc or Agnes Sorel type of woman this ; but rather of the Louise de 
la Valliere mould— a woman to sin, her heart being tempter, and to 
be sorry for her wrong-doing forever after. 

“ Paquerette, ” murmured Ishmael, thoughtfully, perceiving the 
relation between the white spring flower and this pale fragile pretti- 
ness, “ were you christened Paquerette ? ” 

“I don’t know,” she answered childishly, “I don’t remember.” 

“ Of course not,” he said, smiling at her simplicity ; “ one does not 
usually remember one's baptism. But have you no other name ? ” 

“ Not that I know of. My grandfather once said that he called me 
Paquerette because I was such a poor white little thing when he 
first took care of me.” 

“ And you have neither father nor mother living ? ” 

“ Neither,” sighed Paquerette. 

‘ ‘ Can you remember your parents, or did they both die while 
you were a baby ? ” 

He is not questioning her out of idle curiosity, or with the idea 
of making conversation while they strolled by the shabby, dusty 
trees, in the people’s much-trampled wood. He wanted to get 


-72 


.4ir ISILMAELITE. 


nearer to this pale flower-like creature ; to know how this delicate 
spray could have shot forth from the rugged tree of hard-working 
humanity. 

“I never saw either father or mother,” the girl answered sadly. 
“I used to think till a year ago that my grandfather and his wife 
were my father and mother, only a good deal older than other girls’ 
fathers and mothers. And then some one in the house — the old tin- 
man on the fifth floor, wdio lived there before I was bom — told me 
that my mother died while she was young. She was very pretty, ho 
said. He remembered her wdien she was smaller and younger than 
I am now. I asked him why she died so young, but he did not 
know. She went away, and then she came back with me, and then 
she died, and W’as buried among the poor people at Pere Lachaise. 
There is no stone to tell wdiere she lies. I have gone there some- 
times on a Sunday afternoon, and walked about over the long grass 
under which she is lying with so many others, all nameless. After 
a few years the great common grave will be opened again, and more 
coffins wull be put in till it is full — the dead lying above and below 
each other in crow^ds, just as the living are crowded in story above 
story in the big houses like ours.” 

“ It is hard,” said Ishmael, setting his teeth, for to this stanch 
Eepublican all inequalities of rank and wealth seemed hard, “ but 
it will not always be so. The living and the dead will have their 
rights by-and-by. The hewers of w’ood and drawers of water will 
not always be flung into a common grave. And as you live with 
your grandfather and grandmother. Mademoiselle Piiquerette,” he 
went on, ‘ ‘ I suppose they are very fond of you ? ” 

He fancied that the love of an old couple for an orphan grand- 
child must b^ something over and above the common love of parents 
— tenderer, and more blindly indulgent. 

“They are not always unkind,” Paquerette answ’ered innocently. 

“ Not ahvays. Are they ever unkind to you ? ” 

‘ ‘ Sometimes. They are very poor. Grandfather works very hard 
— sometimes. He makes beautiful things — bureaus or escritoires 
for the furniture-dealers. But he cannot always sell w*hat he has 
made for a good price, and then he gets unhappy and very angry 
with grandmother and me. And they both have to take a good 
deal of wine and brandy for their rheumatism, and when one is old 
that gets into one’s head and one does not know’ what one says or 
does.” 

“ I hope you never take wine or brandy. Mademoiselle Paquerette,” 
Ishmael said, earnestly. 

“They never give me any — they have none to spare,” the girl an- 
sw’ered, with childlike simplicity, “ and I hate the smell of the stuff. 
I have to fetch it for grandmother from the wine-shop.” 

“I hope you will alw’ays hate it,” said Ishmael. “ Strong drink 
is the curse of great cities. In Brittany nobody gets drunk ; we 
drink only cider. But there w’e are always in the fresh air ; our 
brains are not dulled by the stifling atmosphere of small, crowded 
rooms,” he continued, recalling that crowded wine-shop near his 
lodgings, where the men heated themselves and maddened them- 


AN TSmiAELim. 


73 


selves, as they sat in the oven-like rooms under the low, blackened 
ceiling, drinking their coarse spirit and smoking their rank tobacco 
and holding forth to one another with an eloquence that was ranker 
and coarser than potato brandy or cabbage-leaf tobacco, could 
Ishmael but have understood it aright. 

He had to explain to Paquerette where Brittany was and what 
kind of a place. Her ignorance upon all possible subjects was of the 
densest. The whole world outside the Faubourg St. Antoine and 
Pere Lachaise was a blank to her. The faubourg was her only idea 
of town, the cemetery her sole notion of country. She listened to 
Ishmael’s description of his native in’ovince with eyes that grew 
wider and widfer with wonderment. Tdie sea, what was that ? And 
rocks, what were those ? Hills, valleys, orchards, windmills, river 
willow-shaded, flocks of turkeys, processions of geese, broad stretches 
of yellow sand — everything had to be explained to her. Ishmael 
grew eloquent as he went on, for love of that dear land which he 
had left ; not for lack of love on his part, but because parental love 
was lacking there for hi)n. He told Paquerette all about the village 
of Pen-Hoel and its surroundings and his own wild, free life there ; 
but he never mentioned the name of the place or the chateau or ut- 
tered a word which could indicate that he had been anything higher 
than a peasant in his native place. His x^^st life was a i^rofound 
secret which he had no intention of revealing to any one. His youth 
and its belongings were dead and buried, and he stood alone — a 
young Cmsar who had just passed life’s Eubicon and had taken ui) 
arms against fate. 

By and by came more dancing, while the sun went down in a sky 
of crimson and gold behind a meagre avenue of shabby limes, their 
spring foliage already tarnished with the dust of the city, and while 
umber shadows stole across the scattered patches of scrubby wood 
and copse. The old Savoyard had sent his dog round among the 
company vdth a hat in his mouth, and had been so satisfied with the 
result that he was smiling over his barrel-organ, and grinding away 
with renewed energy, while his faithful mongrel sat beside him, 
wagging a poor stumx> of a tail, the more ornamental half of which 
had been demolished iriece by iriece in various fights with other 
mongrels. 

Again Paquerette and Ishmael waltzed together, to the “Due de 
Eeichstadt,” which enjoyed a revival of poi3ularity just now on the 
organs of Paris, as a delicate conq^liment to him who called the dead 
boy cousin. Again the fair small head reclined against th.e stone- 
mason’s stalwart shoulder, and the strong arm sustained the girl’s 
slim figure, so that her little feet seemed to skim rather than to 
tread the dusty turf. They were dancing still when P^querette’s 
friends began to urge the prudence of turning iheir faces homeward. 
Ishmael stojrped reluctantly when the organ-grintler ground his last 
bar. He had danced many" a waltz in the least disreputable dancing 
])laces of the workmen’s quarter, but never had he felt the very in- 
spiration of the dance as ho had felt it to-day, on the disad^ antage- 
ous turf, under the oiien sky. The bastringues yonder, even the best 
of them, reeked with odors of cheap wine and bi andy, were befouled 


74 


AN miMAELlTE. 


by bad company and evil language. Ishmael had always left such 
places disgusted with himself for having been induced to enter 
them. But to-day he had felt himself in respectable company ; he 
had heard not one foul word. He felt that he would like to see 
more of his little partner of to-day, of those three candid-looking, 
decent girls, her companions. 

“Your little friend dances exquisitely,” he said to Big Lisbeth. 
“ I think you must have taught her.” 

“ Not 1, indeed,” answered Lisbeth, laughing at his implied com- 
pliment, so evidently meant to conciliate. ‘ ‘ She has taught herself, 
jDoor little thing, skimming about the yard, like a bird or a butter- 
fly. The only joy she has had in life, I believe, has been to dance to 
the sound of an organ, when one has chanced to come our way, 
which has not been often.” 

“ She seems to have had a very unhappy childhood, poor little 
thing ! ” said Ishmael, walking beside Lisbeth, as they made their 
way toward the point at which the party was to disiDerse. He had 
no intention of leaving the four girls at that point, but meant to 
offer them his escort to their home. 

“ The old trolleur and his wife are an ogre and ogress,” answered 
Lisbeth indignantly. “Figure to yourself, then, monsieur, this is 
the first day’s pleasure that poor thing has ever known ; and if it 
were not for " my cousin lending her a gowm — but I ought not to 
speak of such things ; only when one is angry ” 

“ You are right to feel angiy. Poor child, poor child ! ” 

So even the neat pink frock, the modest muslin cap were borrowed 
plumage. Poor little Cinderella ! Hitherto Ishmael had believed 
his own unloved childhood to be altogether exceptional — a kind of 
martyrdom unknown before in the stoiy of mankind. And here was 
this fragile girl, ever so much unhappier, steeped to the lips in 
squalid poverty, tlie drudge of a drunken old man and woman. He 
had admired the women before to-night, had indulged more than 
one fancy of the passing moment ; but he had never before been 
deeply interested in a woman’s character or a woman’s fate. And 
Paquerette interested him both ways. He wanted to know what 
kind of a girl she was ; he wanted to know all that could be known 
of her sad story. 

“Let me see you home, mademoiselle,” he said to Lisbeth, in 
whom he recognized the head of the Benoit family. 

“Monsieur is very good. We thought of returning by the omni- 
bus.” 

“ On such a lovely Spring night ? The omnibus will be crowded 
to suffocation. It will be an affair of waiting till midnight for places. 
Don’t you think it would be much pleasanter to walk home ? ” 

“It is a long way,” said Lisbeth, pleased at the idea of saving so 
many sous ; ‘ ‘ but if the others are not too tired ” 

“ Not at all,” protested Toinette. “ The night air is so fresh, I 
could walk to Asni^res or Bougival.” 

“ But Paquerette, she has danced so much, she must be very 
tired,” said Pauline. 

“Tired ! Oh, no, not in the least,” cried Paquerette. “It will 


AN ISHMAELITE. 75 

be delicious to walk home — although the omnibus was heavenly,” 
she added, gratefully remembering her first drive. 

So they all set out along the dusty road, less obviously arid now 
under the cool softness of night. Paquerette found herself hanging 
upon Ishmael’s arm, somehow, Just as in their first dance she had 
seemed to glide unconsciously into his arms. He had taken the 
little hand in his and slipped it through his arm, with an air of mas- 
tery which seemed like protection, friendshq^, shelter, the guardian- 
ship of the strong over the weak. . 

He asked Paquerette no questions about herself or her life as 
they walked back to the Faubourg St. Antoine. After the storv he 
had heard briefly from Lisbeth Benoit he felt that it would be almost 
cruelty to touch upon the poor child’s surroundings. He wanted to 
know more of her story ; he was moved and interested as he had 
never been till now ; but he felt that he must make his discoveries 
for himself, not from those delicate lips, with their tint of pale rose- 
buds. 

He spoke of himself, or rather of his province, which was another 
part of himself, the orchards and fields and winding river, the sea 
and rocks of that land where the borders of Normandy and Brittany 
almost touch across the narrow boundary of the Couesnon. She 
longed of all things to behold the sea and the country and the vine- 
yards and mountains which the charabia had told her about when he 
sat smoking his pipe with her grandfather. » 

Ishmael inquired who this charabia was of whom she spoke as a 
familiar friend. 

The charabia was grandfather’s friend, Paquerette told him. It 
was he who took away a piece of furniture when grandfather had 
finished it, and carried it round to the dealers. Sometimes he got a 
very good price, and then he stayed to supj^er, and grandmother 
made a saladier of wine a la Frangaise afterward, and then the cha- 
rabia grew merry and talked of his native Auvergne, There were 
bad times when nobody would give a fair j^rice for the furniture ; 
and then when there was hardly bread to eat tire charabia came for- 
ward and bouglil; grandfather’s work himself, rather than they should 
all starve. Grandfather was a trolleur — a man who worked on his 
own account, and sold his work to the dealers. 

“ The charabia must be a very benevolent person, or a rank thief,” 
said Ishmael. “ He is altogether a new character to me. What 
kind of a man is he ? ” 

“Stout, broad-shouldered, with a dark face, and short black hair 
— not a very nice-looking man,” answered Piiquerette, simply ; 

‘ ‘ but grandfather says he means well, except when he is angry, and 
then he says the charabia is a blood-sucker, and is growing fat ui)on 
his flesh and bones. Grandmother says the charabia is rich, and 
that we ought to make much of him.” 

“ And you. Mademoiselle Paquerette, do you like this Auvergnat ? ” 
asked Ishmael. 

Paquerette had never been called mademoiselle until to-day. It 
was a kind of ju’omotion. 

“ Like him — I?” she said w-onderingly. “ I don’t think he cares 


7^3 


AN ISIUIAELITE. 


very much w hether I like or dislike him. He has hardly ever spoken 
to me, ])ut he sits and stares at me sometimes with great black eyes 
which almost frighten me. I have to fetch the wine and brandy 
wdieii he comes to supper. I hate him,” she added, wdth a shudder ; 
“Imt I mustn’t say so. You w'on’t tell grandfather? ” 

“Not for the world, mademoiselle. I am afraid from the w^ay you 
speak that these grandparents of yours are not very kind to you.” 

“ They are not so kind as you,” the girl answered softly, for there 
w^as a protecting friendliness in his tone which aw’akened in her a 
new sense of sympathy ; “ but they do not mean to be unkind — only 
life is so hard for them.” 

They were near the Rue Sombreuil by this time, and in a few 
more 2iiinutes they entered the gloomy arclnvay of the common 
lodging-house — not so large as those barracks of a hundred rooms, 
to be built a few years later under the Haussmann rule, but large 
enough to hold a good deal of misery and foulness of all kinds. The 
yard looked very dreary in the faint light of a moon wdiicli was just 
rising above the tow^ers of Notre-Dame. A guttering candle flared 
w'ith a yellowdsh flame upon the bare old chestnut table in the trol- 
leur’s room. The door was open and Mtire Lemoine was standing 
in the doorw^ay gossiping with a neighbor. She w’ore a smart little 
colored shawd over her shabby gown, and her Sunday cap, wdiich 
was an interesting specimen of dirty finery. She was in that con- 
dition v.’hich her friends called poivi-e, and had the peculiar solemnity 
of manner wdiich sometimes goes wdth that state. 

“ It is that torchon, at last,” she exclaimed. “ Do you think you 
have given me enough of inquietude this evening, p’tite scelerate, 
roaming the streets after dark, you that have been brought up as 
carefully as a mam’selle? And now” — with a sujipressed hiccough 
— “you come home with a strange monsieur in a blouse ! ” 

Paquerette and Ishmael had the start of the others by some five 
minutes. 

“You knew’ I was wdth kind friends grandmother,” said the girl. 
“ This gentleman came home with me. Mam’selle Benoit and her 
cousin are just behind us.” 

On this Mere Lemoine courtesied to the stranger with a dignified 
air, and regretted that her husband was not at home to invite him to 
supper; but if he w-ould break a crust with them, he would be 
heartily welcome. 

Ishmael, moved by curiosity about Paquerette, or interest in Pa- 
querette, snajiped at the invitation. 

“ I dined too w’ell to be able to eat anything,” he said ; “ but I 
should not be sorry to rest for half an hour, without deranging 
madame. It is nearly five miles from Vincennes, though the W’alk 
seemed a mere bagatelle ; and I have a longish w’ay to go to my 
lodgings.” 

Mme. Lemoine threw^ up her hands in w’onderment. ‘ ‘ They had 
W’alked all the wny from Vincennes ! That paresseuse of hers, for 
example, wlio ahvays loitered on every errand ! Wonders would 
never cease ! ” 

“ It w’as a lovely w’alk,” said Piiquerette. “ Mademoiselle Benoit 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


77 


asked me if I would rather go in the omnibus, and it was my own 
choice to walk. You are not tired, are you, monsieur ? ” appealing 
to Ishmael. “ I feel as if I could walk five miles more.” 

“ Tired ? no, mademoiselle, not absolutely tired ; but I should be 
glad to rest for a little quarter of an hour.” 

The Benoit girls were parting with the goggle-eyed youth and his 
sister under the archway, Piiquerette flew across to them as they 
came into the yard to thank them for their goodness to her. 

“ And the gown ? ” she said. “Shall I come up to your room 
and change it for my own ? ” 

“ Not to-night, child,” answered Pauline, kindly ; “ you must be 
tired after that long walk. I will bring down your things at six 
o’clock to-morrow morning, and then you can return me mine. I 
suppose you are always up at six ? ” 

‘ ‘ I will be up at six to-morrow morning, ” answered Paquerette, 
ashamed to own the lateness of her normal hour. What was there 
to induce early rising in that ground-floor den, where the trolleur 
and his wife sometimes slept half through the sunny forenoon, coiled 
in the darkness of their hole like dogs in a kennel ? 

The Benoit girls kissed Paquerette, wished Ishmael a brief good- 
night, and ran off to their dingy staircase. Ten o’clock was striking 
from the tower of Notre-Dame — not a veiy dissipated hour, albeit 
Mere Lemoine pretended to be shocked at the lateness of her grand- 
daughter’s return. 

Ishmael was invited to walk into the living-room and to seat him- 
self in the trolleur’s greasy old Voltaire, an heirloom which had 
grown dirtier and more rickety year by year daring Paquerette’s 
jnogress from baby to girl, but which was still regarded as the acme 
of comfort. The stranger looked round the room wonderingly. 
There was not one feature to redeem the all-pervading dreariness ; 
even the fine old walnut wood armoire, tall, capacious, a relic of 
23rovincial industiy and comfort, had been degraded from its sober 
antique beauty by neglect and hard usage. The brass lock and hinges 
had fallen into disrepair ; the heavy door yawed ajar, revealing a 
heterogeneous collection of old clothes, crockery, boots, hardware, 
and empty wine bottles on the shelves within. Nothing in the room 
suggested neat or car.eful habits in the occupants. In one corner the 
cabinetmaker’s bench stood above a heap of shavings, which must 
have been n,ccumulating for weeks ; in another a basket of tools had 
been flung down anyhow among dirty plates and saucepans. A 
greasy pack of cards on the table beside the battered brass candle- 
stick showed how Mere Lemoine and her gossip had been amusing 
themselves. 

Not a primrose or a spray of wall-flower from the flower market ; 
not one sign of womanly niceness, of the household fairy’s care, in 
all the room. Ishmael sighed only as he glanced at Paquerette, who 
stood shyly beside the smoky hearth, straight, slim, fragile-looking 
in her white and pink I'aiment. 

“ Poor child,” he said to himself, “ she looks sweet and innocent 
as a spring flower in the woods at Pen-Hoel ; but what honest man 
would ever dare to marry a girl from such a home as this ? ” 


78 


AH ISIIMAELITE. 


While Ishmael sat beside the hearth, replying to the grandmothers 
polite interrogatories, Pere Lemoine came in, unexpectedly early, 
unexpectedly sober. He had not been to the Faithful Pig, but to a 
political meeting of ebenistes in a vi^ie-shop in the Hue de la 
Eoquette, where they assembled secretly in a back room, and in fear 
of the police, all such meetings at this time being illegal. Although 
he had taken his glass or two he was in a perfectly respectable con- 
dition, full of the meeting, and of the importance of the syndicate of 
cabinetmakers, of which he was only an outsider. 

“ Monsieur, here, is no friend to the President,” said Mere Le- 
inoine ; “he is a man after your own heart.” 

“ Pardon, madame,” answered Ishmael, “ I have been in Paris only 
half a year. I reserve my opinion. If Louis Bonaparte means well 
to the people, I am with him heart and hand. But I wait to know 
more of the Prince President and his policy. He has dealt fairly 
with France so far, and this talk of an impending coui^ d’etat may 
be mere nonsense. It was talked of nearly a year ago, and has not 
come yet.” 

“ The time has not come — the necessity has not come,” said 
Jacques Lemoine, fresh from the secret discussion of the wine-shop. 
“ Wait till the sands are running out in the glass ; wait till that 
man’s day of power is waning ; and then see what he will do to 
keep the sceptre in liis hand. Remember the Consulate and the 
Empire. We shall see the same game played over again by an in- 
ferior player. I hope, friend, when the struggle comes, you will be 
found on our side.” 

“ I shall be on the side of liberty and right, be sure of tliat,” an- 
swered Ishmael. 


CHAPTER X. 

“ ]MY SOim FAILED IVIE WHEN HE SPAIiE.’^ 

Ishmael saw no more of Paquerette for nearly a month after that 
night in May, although he asked Mine. Morice. more than once dur- 
ing that time why she did not organize another jiicnic with those 
nice girls, her friends of the Faubourg St. Antoine. Mme. Morice 
had other jilans, or the Benoit girls were otherwise engaged. He 
might have found some excuse for calling in the Rue Sombreuil 
had he chosen ; but he shrunk with aversion from that dingy room, 
ha] f workshop, half kitchen ; the trolleur in his greasy blouse, the 
trolleur’s wife with lier crafty questions, her bloodshot eyes, looks 
as evil as those of the fabulous witches dear to his native province. 
He was sorry for Paquerette ; he sympathized with the innocent, 
helpless creature, whose youth had been overshadowed by this ogre 
and ogress. But to choose a wife from such a den — he, witl^, manly 
inspirations and gentle blood in his veins— no, that was not possible. 
Neither was it possible for him to entertain one dishonoral)le wish 
about that childlike creature. And yet he ardently desired to seo 


AN TSIIMAELITE. 79 

Paquerette again ; out of curiosity, out of a purely philanthropic 
yearning to be of some good to so unhappy a being. " 

One Saturday afternoon, just before midsummer, Ishmael, com- 
ing home from work earlier than usual, heard a shrill confusion of 
voices in the little room behind Mine. Morice’s shop. The door 
was half open to the common passage, to admit as much summer air 
as might wander that way, and Mme. Morice caught sight of the 
blouse going by. 

“It is Monsieur Ishmael himself,” she cried. “Come in, if you 
please, monsieur. You have been asking me about picnics for the 
last three weeks, and now is your opportunity. The demoiselles 
Benoit and I ‘have been discussing a grand ft3te for to-morrow.” 

“ I am with you, ladies,” answered Ishmael. “ I wish I had a 
big balloon and could carry you all off to Brittany by to-morrow 
evening. It is the feast of St. John, our greatest festival. AVhen 
the sun goes down every rock and every hill begins to shine with 
its bonfire in honor of Monsieur St. Jean — a hundred fires, a thou- 
sand fires, all sparkling and gleaming in the twilight. And then 
comes the joyous sound of music, and a procession of girls in their 
holiday clothes come to dance round the fires. She who can dance 
round nine before the first stroke of midnight will have a husband 
before the year is out. And the farmers bring their beasts to pass 
them through the sacred fire — sure safeguard against cattle disease 
forever after. And from valley to valley sound the shepherds’ 
horns, calling and answering each other through the night ; and be- 
side many a fire there are placed empty chairs that the spirits of the 
beloved dead may come and sit there to hear the songs and watch 
the dances.” 

“What a strange peojfie you Bretons are ! ” exclaimed Mme. Mo- 
rice. 

“ We are a people who honor our ancestors and believe in their 
God,” answered Ishmael, gravely. “It^seems to me sometimes that 
in Paris you have neither the memory of the x^ast nor a creed in the 
X3resent.” 

“ We remember our revolutions,” rej^lied Mme. Morice, whose 
husband was a politician ; “ they are the landmarks in our his- 
tory.” 

“You were discussing a picnic,” said Ishmael. 

The three Benoit girls and Mme. Morice were seated round a table 
furnished with dainty little white cujjs and saucers, a plate of deli- 
cate biscuits, and a chocolatiere wdiich breathed odors of vanilh^. 
As a grocer’s wife, madame could afford to entei-tain her friends with 
such luxuries once in a way. She handed Ishmael one of the little 
toy cux)S and saucers, which he took with the air of an elej)hant 
l)icking up a jDin. 

“Yes, wm were talking of a grand excursion,” answered practical 
Lisbeth Benoit, “ but I am afraid it is too far, and will cost too 
much. We want to go to Marly-le-Eoi, and spend the day in the 
woods, and dine at a restaurant in the village, where there is a nice 
little garden Avith an arbor in Avhich one can dine. Madame Morice 
knows all about it. We went there on her sister’s Avedding-day. 


80 


AN ISmiAELITE. 


The people are civil, and the dinner not too expensive. But the 
journey there and back — that is a serious question.” 

The three Benoit girls shook their heads gravely. 

There arose a serious discussion. There was railway fare to a 
certain station on the line, which only took them about half way to 
Marly-le-Roi, and then there was the diligence, and then the dinner. 
It would cost at least twelve francs a head, all told, travelling 
third-class on the railways and in the cheapest part of the diligence, 
and limiting the dinner to bouillon, bouilli, salad, and dessert. 

It seemed a frightful price to pay for one day’s pleasure, but what 
a delight it is to escape out of the dust of Paris into the real country, 
the grand old royal forest, the village which could not be more 
primitive were it a hundred miles from the metropolis ! The Benoit 
girls had given themselves no pleasure since tha day at Vincennes. 
They had been saving their money for some stupendous treat ; and 
this idea of Marly, which they had seen and admired so intensely 
two years ago, had obtained possession of them. . 

Bougival — Asnieres ? No ; they w'anted the forest, the old for- 
saken mountains, the water-pools, the memories of a stately past. 

So, after an infinitude of talk, calculation, argumentation, it was 
finally settled that they should all go to Marly. 

“ Your friend Mademoiselle Paquerette, you will take her, will 
you not ? ” he asked, appealing to Lisbeth. 

Mile. Benoit sighed and shrugged her shoulders. 

“Not possible,” she said. “Poor little Paquerette w^ould dearly 
love to go, I am sure ; but that wicked old trolleur w^ould not give 
her twelve francs for a day’s j^leasure, though I dare say he spends 
tmce as much every day at the Faithful Pig.” 

“ But you might pay for her. Mademoiselle Benoit,” said Ish- 
mael, eagerly. “That is to say, you might allow me to find the 
money, and say nothing about it to Mademoiselle Paquerette. She 
is only a child ; she would never ask wdio paid for her.” 

“ She is little more than a child, I admit,” replied the practical 
outspoken Lisbeth, “ and yet I hardly know if it is a right thing to 
do. You seem to admire Paquerette very much, monsieur. I hope 
you mean w^ell by her. ” 

“Monsieur Ishmael means w'ell by all the w’orld. I will answ'or 
for that,” interjected Mine. Morice. 

Ishmael reddened a little at this. 

“ Believe me that I am incapable of one evil thought in regard to 
your poor little friend,” he answered, gravely. “ Perhaps you go a 
shade too far when you say I admire her. I am very sorry for her, 
poor child ; such a blighted girlhood is a thing to give eveiy honest 
man the heartache. But I owm that, if Mademoiselle Paqueretto 
were ever so much more fascinating, I should hardly go to the trol- 
leur’s den , in search of a wife.” 

“Precisely,” said Lisbeth, “and since that is so, I should think 
the less you and Pdquerette meet the better.” 

“ What nonsense, Lisbeth ! ” cried Pauline. “ Why should you 
deny Paquerette a day’s pleasure, which monsieur wns so geneiWs 
as to offer her out of sheer compassion ? Paquerette is not so silly 


AJ^ ISIIMAELTTE. 


81 


as to misunderstand his Icindness ; and think what rapture it would 
he to her to see the woods and the real country, and to dine under 
green leaves in a garden full of roses and carnations. It would be 
too cinel to deprive her of such a pleasure.” 

“ There are some sweets that leave a bitter taste afterward,” said 
Lisbeth, but the rest of the party took no more notice of her than 
the Trojan of Cassandra. They were all on Ishmael’s side. What 
other feeling tlkm pure juty could he entertain for such a poor little 
waif as P4querette, and why deprive her of the kindness he so gen- 
erously offered ? Lisbeth was overruled. The hour for meeting at 
the railway station w^as fixed, and Lshmael bade the ladies good 
afternoon, and Went u^d to his own room under the tiles. 

Ishmael’s apartment was in every way different from the trolleur’s 
den in the Eue Sombreuil. He had furnished his lodging himself 
with divers substantial pieces of furniture picked up at the second- 
hand dealers. A fine old clieny wood commode, solid and substantial 
as the cabinet-work of Eennes or Virtry, a mahogany bureau, style 
First Empire, iDonderous, ungraceful, but passing good of its kind. 
The little iron bedstead in a corner was screened by a chintz curtain. 
There were four rush-bottomed chairs, a Avriting-table in the win- 
dow, and two deal shelves of Ishmael’s own making, filled with 
useful books, chiefly on mechanics ; for this young man had set 
himself to learn the constructive arts in all their bearing on his 
trade of mason and builder. He had taken up mathematics also, of 
which he had learned only the elements from good P^re Bressant, 
of Pen-Hoel. 

The room was kept with the punty and neatness of a monastic 
cell. Here, at the little stove in the corner, lshmael brewed his 
coffee in the early mornirig ; here, late into the night, he sat at yon- 
der writing-table studying, reading, thinking, inventing; for that 
busy brain of his was full of plans and visions — bridges yet to bo 
built, railways in the far future, aqueducts, viaducts, new roads, 
new levels. For at least three nights out of seven he gave himself 
up to hard study, locking his door upon the outside world, lighting 
his lamp in the early dusk, and working till the small hours. 

There were other nights which lshmael spent out of doors ; but 
these nights were rarely wasted in the haunts of vice or folly. The 
young workman had entered with heart and soul into the thronging 
life of Parisian politics. He went with the representatives of the 
Left in their championship of republican ideas, their dreams of an 
ideal republic— universal suffrage, universal enlightenment. He 
was a member of two republican societies ; adored Victor Hugo ; 
spoke on occasion, and was no mean orator, and was willing to shed 
his blood in support of his opinions should the hour of conflict 
come. 

He thought of his lost home sometimes as he walked back from 
his work, thought of his little half-brothers he had loved so well, 
and wondered wdiat they were doing in the quiet eventide, and 
whether they still missed their playmate. He was not angry with 
his father for the hard words that hastened his exodus from the old 
. home. He knew’ that his step-mother’s venomous hate had been the 


82 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


true canse of all nnkindness on his father’s part, helped not a little 
by the bitter memories of the past, which had set a brand on the 
eldest son from the very beginning. He was not angry with Fate 
for having banished him from his birthplace — for having landed him 
on a lower level in life. He had an indomitable belief in his own 
Ijower to climb. Already, though he had not been a year in Paris, 
he had achieved a reputation for superior skill and sui3erior industry. 
Already Ishmael imagined a time in which he was to be an emi^eror 
of labor. His workmen should not be crowded in filthy holes, or 
given over to Satan and all his works. He would found a brother- 
hood of industry and temperance. He would build a lay monastery 
■ — a mighty barrack for workmen and their families full of light and 
air and cleanliness. Men so lodged would be healthier and stronger, 
better physically and morally ; better workmen, giving better value 
for their wages. Ishmael did not foresee that perfect machinery of 
trade-unionism which forbids the individual man to work better 
than his brothers, and insists upon the minimum of labor all around. 

Father Bressan’s money had long been returned to him out of 
Ishmael’s savings, and the apartment at Menilmontant had been 
furnished from the same source. An occasional letter from the 
good priest told Ishmael how the little world of Pen-Hoel was going 
on. M. de Caradec was fairly well — he had hunted, and shot a little 
in the season ; but he had an air of not being altogether happy. 
Madame was an invalid always, as of old ; but the doctor laughed, 
and said her complaint was only a chronic peevishness, which was 
likely to increase with years. The two boys throve splendidly, and 
their growth was visible to the eye. Next winter Father Bressant 
was to begin their education, and x^repare them for the Polytechnic 
at Eennes. 

Midsummer and the woods of Marly. What could be a more de- 
licious combination? Paquerette, joyous, though a little ashamed 
of herself in her borrowed gown, thought that heaven itself could 
hardly be so lovely as this chestnut grove in which she was wander- 
ing with big Lisbeth and Ishmael— a glade where the sunshine 
glinted athwart tremulous and semi-transparent leaves, and sx^rinkled 
the mossy ground with flecks of emerald light that looked like 
jewels. All the way they came seemed to have been between groves 
of flowering acacias ; the atmosx^here was full of their subtle per- 
fume. Paquerette’s nostrils had never smelt such sweet odors. 
And the sky, and the water ; never had she imagined such a lovely 
azure. Surely the sky above the Eue Sombreuil was a different 
color. 

A faint rose-flush lighted her pale cheeks as she walked in that 
leafy glade, and listened respectfully, yet understanding very little, 
while Ishmael expounded the political situation — the chances for 
and against a covp d'etat — or a tranquil termination of the prince- 
X^resident’s term of x^ower, to Eisbeth, who had a masculine intel- 
lect, read newsx^apers, and was deex^ly interested in x^ublic affairs. 

Paquerette strayed away from them every now and then to gather 
flowers or to examine mosses or butterflies, like a hax^py child. The 


AN IS IIMA ELITE. 


83 


wood was all-sufficient for lier happiness. The sunshine, the sweet 
air, the sense of mystery in those aisles of glancing siinlight and 
flickering shades of a glad green world stretching away and away 
into immeasurable distance, the first vague dawning sense of the in- 
finite stealing over a mind that had never before imagined anything 
beyond the squalidest, saddest realities — all this was a kind of in- 
toxication and Paquerette flew from flower to flower, screaming with 
rapture at the vision of a butterfly, lifted out of herself and off the 
common earth by this new delight. 

The prudent Lisbeth had made up her mind that Ishmael and 
Paquerette wei^e not to be left too much alone. That long walk 
from Vincennes, in which they had gone so far ahead of the rest, 
had seemed so engrossed in each other, had aroused the wise dam- 
sel’s suspicions. It was all very well for Ishmael to protest that he 
only pitied the poor child. All the world knows that pity is akin 
to love, and since he had said that he would not take a wife from 
that hole in the Hue Sombreuil, there was an end of the matter. 
Poor little Paquerette’s heart must not be broken. So in all their 
ramblings — and they went half the way to St. Germains — Lisbeth 
took care to be near her protegee. 

That did not prevent Ishmael talking to Paquerette, or Paque- 
rette hanging upon his words with obvious delight. She did not lis- 
ten while he talked politics ; those were dark to her. But, seeing her 
rapture in flowers and trees and all living things, he began to talk 
of these to her, telling her the names of flowers, the habits of in- 
sects and birds, squirrels, rabbits, weasels, moles, field-mice, water- 
rats — all the free creatures that haunt woods and water-pools. They 
had been the companions of his boyhood, his books, his study. 

“ How can you bear to live in a gi’eat town where there are no 
such things ? ” Paquerette asked wonderingly. 

“I endure my life in the town because I look forward to the day 
when I shall be able to have my nest in the country,” he answered. 
“Not to live there always. Life among woods and fields is a long 
pastoral dream, an everlasting idyl, A man must have work, move- 
ment, progress, and those he can only have at their best in a great 
centre like Paris. But it is worth while to toil for a week in stony 
places for one such -day as this at the end of the six.” 

“I can understand "that,” said Paquerette. “And now tell me 
about your own country, as you told me that night — the fairies, the 
saints," the sacred fires, the sea and the fishing-boats, the wild boar 
hunt in which you were nearly killed.” 

Ishmael laughed and reddened. 

“I am afraid I talked of nothing but myself that night,” he 
said. 

“ I like to hear you talk like that,” she answered, simply. 

By the time they went back to the little hilly village street of 
Marly, Paquerette had a lapful of wild flowers, mosses, twigs, tufts 
of grass, toadstools, and colored pebbles, which she had collected in 
her woodland walk. She carried her treasures frankly in the skirb 
of her cotton frock, not ashamed of showing the clean white petti- 
coat and stockings, albeit her shoes 'were of the shabbiest. I he feet 


84 : 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


in the well-worn shoes were small and slender, like the bare liands 
which held iif) the bundle of flowers and mosses. 

“I must get a basket for you to carry home your botanical collec- 
tion,” said Ishmael, laughing at her enthusiasm ; and "while the 
rest of the party were settling down at the humble eating-house, and 
exploring the little garden in which they were to dine, Ishmael 
went all over the village to find a shop where he could buy a basket 
for Paquerette. 

He was not a man to fail in any quest, great or small, and he ap- 
peared in the garden with a capacious willow basket hanging over 
his arm, just as the others were going to sit down to their souid with- 
out him. There was a little colored straw twisted in among the 
willow, and the basket was altogether the smartest and best he had 
been able to buy. Paquerette gave a little cry of joy when she was 
told that this beautiful thing was for her. Not since the brass thim- 
ble given her by Lisbeth had she received anything that could be 
called a gift. She trembled and turned pale with delight as she 
flung herself down on the grass, with the basket in her lap, and 
began to arrange her treasures — her oak apples, and golden bright 
toadstools, and snowy blooms of mountain ash, and sprigs of haw- 
thorn, and long tendrils of woodbine and wild convolvulus, and 
feathery fern fronds in all the freshness of their earliest green. She 
forgot all about dinner, though the soup tureen was steaming on the 
table in the arbor. 

“What a child she is!” exclaimed Mine. Morice, looking at the 
slender figure sitting in the sunshine, the small oval face bent over 
spray and blossom, pale and delicate as the white ash flower in the 
tremulous hand. 

“ Come to dinner, IMademoiselle Paquerette, or your soup will be 
cold,” cried Morice, a middle-aged and somewhat obese personage, 
whose love of a good table had stamped itself upon his honest face 
in the form of pimples. When any friend of the grocer’s ventured 
to allude to these pimples he always declared that they were of a 
kind that came from poorness of blood, and that it was a" duty which 
he owed himself not to lower his diet. 

It was M. Morice who liad ordered the dinner at the village au- 
berge before they started for their woodland ramble ; and he had 
not restricted himself to the Spartan simplicity which his wife and 
the Benoit girls had pro]^osed yesterday. He had made a bargain 
with the innkeeper for a dinner at tliree" francs a head — such a din- 
ner as in Paris would have cost six, he told the others tnumphantly 
after the compact had been made. 

There was a bouillon a la bonne femme, a consomme with eggs 
floating in it, over which Morice smacked his lips. Then came a 
piece of beef, Imiled to rags, but made savory with gherkins and 
mustard and vinegar. After that a chajion eni blanquette, creamy, 
velvety, which was discussed in solemn silence, as too beautiful for 
words. Then came a dish of peas a la beurre, and anon a salad, 
'made by the worthy Morice himself, with intense gravity; and to 
crown the whole a large dish of mufs a la neige, which apiieared 
simultaneously with a dessert of strong Gruyere Savoy biscuit, and 


AJ^ ISHMAELITE. 


85 


wild strawberries. Puquerette had never dreamed of such a dinner 
yet she was too excited to eat much. Ishmael stole a look across the 
table every now and then to see how she was getting on. She had 
a delicate way of eating, child of the people though she was— a 
delicacy which came from utter indifference to those pleasures of 
the table to which the worthy Morice yonder were a kind of religion 
She reminded Ishmael of his step-mother. She had the same air of 
ijagilm , ot being made of too fine a clay for her surroundings And 
yet .she was a grandchild of those two dreadful people in the Rue 
Sombreuil— the woman with the solemn slow speech, the fishy eve 
and fixed stare of the habitual tippler ; the old man with the brandy- 
nose, and fevered breath, reeking of trois-six. It was out of that 
hideous den she had come— to that degraded tvpe she belonged. 
\\ hat could she be to him ever ? Nothing but a creature to pity, and 
help in somewise, if it were possible. Raymond Caradec’s son did 
not forget that he was a gentleman. He had cast in his lot among 
workingmen,_ but it was with a distinct aim and end. He had sunk 
in order to rise. He knew that in the mechanical arts he had his 
chance with the best ; and he looked forward to the time when he 
should be a general where he w^as now only a ranker. He believed in 
his certainty of a successful career as firmly as the young recruit be- 
lieves that he carries a marshal’s baton in his knapsac. 

“I shall never disgi'ace my family by a low marriage,” he said to 
himself. “It wall be time enough to think of a wdfe when I have 
made my fortune. Youth will have gone by that time ; I shall be 
too old to marry for love,” he reflected, wdtli a sigh ; “ but at least I 
can marry for honor.” 

There was no dancing to-day. The little garden with its arbors 
for dining-rooms w^as too full of company. There was no music, 
and perhaps most of the little party had dined too W'ell to be inclined 
for dancing. The Benoits and their friends sauntered and lounged 
in the garden, looking at the other guests, who were all in different 
stages of dining. They w^ent into the house and looked on at a 
game of billiards played by a cpiartette of young soldiers on a very 
small table, and with a level mediocrity wiiich forbade any touch of 
evil feeling. An occasional cannon w^as received with rapture by 
the whole party as an achievement calculated to reflect lustre U2:)on 
every one engaged in the game. 

The house and garden reeked with odors of dinner and rank to- 
bacco. Ishmael felt that he could endure that stifling atmosphere 
no longer, when there was all the wide w'oiid of summer beauty 
within ea.sy reach. Paquerette sat among the Benoit girls on a rus- 
tic bench in a corner of the garden, against a background of scar- 
let-runners. He W’ould have liked to ask her to go for a ramble with 
him ; but he told himself it W’as better he should go alone. What 
were Paquerette and he to each other that he should choose her out 
of all the rest of his comjDanions ? He snatched up his cap and 
went out in a huny, as if it needed all his resolution to go alone. 
T]ie little village had a drow^sy look in the afternoon light. A bell 
was ringing for vespers. Isiimael had meant to go far afield, and 
only to return in time for the starting of the diligence ; but at the 


86 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


open door of the dark little church he stoj^ped and went in, and 
knelt in a dusty corner, praying for the repose of his mother’s soul 
— for her release from her sins. And at the end he made a little 
i:)rayer for Puquerette, that she might be saved from temptations and 
dangers, lifted out of the sordid gloom of her miserable surround- 
ings, preserved in the purity and innocence of her childlike nature. 

H 3 went no further than the church. When the melodious mono- 
tonous sing-song of vesper psalms was over he strolled slowly down 
to the office from which the diligence was to start. 

It was a quiet little inn near the water, and he sat on a low wooden 
2)arapet above the stream, smoking his cigar and idly watching the 
ri^^ples as they flashed and s^Darkled under the light of a midsummer 
moon. 

Islimael sat by the river till the diligence was ready to start, and 
tlie rest of the party camo hurrying along the road from the village, 
breathless, excited, full of talk and laughter. When the soldiers 
had finished their game, M. Dulac and the Benoit girls had made 
another quartette, the gentlemen giving the ladies their first lesson 
in billiards. And the game had caused infinite laughter ; Mine. 
Dulac, a stout, co nfortable-looking young woman, with accroche- 
coeurs on her forehead, pretending to be intensely jealous, and M. 
Morice swelling with jiride in the consciousness of being a great bil- 
liard iilayer en retraite, while he coached the Benoit girls through 
the game, showing them at what angle to hold their cues, and stoox^- 
ing down with one eye shut to make a jii’eliminary survey of the 
balls before every stroke. 

While all the others laughed and talked, Paquerette walked si- 
lently beside her friend Pauline, hugging her basket. In her igno- 
rance of all rustic life she had no thought that the woodland siways 
and flowers would all be faded to-morrow, that the orange-tawny 
fungus would lose its beauty and become a thing to be cast uj^on 
the dust heap. She had a dim idea that flowers and leaves would 
be bright and fair forever, sweet memorials of this one exquisite 
day in her young life— a day never to be forgotten, never to be re- 
peated. . Such joys could come only once in a lifetime. And yet she 
had suffered a sense of loss all the evening, after Ishmael had left 
the 2)arty.— a feeling that the day’s delight was over, a vague sadness 
which she had struggled against, since it were base ingratitude to 
her friends to be less than utterly haj^jiy. 

And now as she stood a little aloof from the others, silent, 
thoughtful, waiting to mount to her place in the diligence, Ishmael 
never came near her. AVhy was he so different from what he had 
been at Vincennes — almost as if he were another person ? Nor did 
he seem the same person who had brought her the basket a few 
hours ago. He sat looking across the river, smoking, grave, silent. 
He did not even glance her way— had forgotten that such a creature 
lived. ^ Her heart swelled ; she felt angry, and then inclined to cry. 
Why did he treat her so cruelly ? 

Presently they all began to scramble into the coach. She hoped 
that he would .sit beside her, that he would tell her about his native 
Brittany — the fairies, the 2)oul2)icains, the strange stone monuments, 


AN ISmTAELITE. 


87 


altars of a departed religion. No ; fora few moments it would have 
been quite easy for him to have taken the seat by her side ; but he 
let the occasion slip, and, behold ! she was screwed into a corner of 
the banquette with the plethoric Morice almost sitting upon her, and 
two of the Benoit girls between her and Ishmael, who occupied the 
seat next the driver. 

On the railway, where they all sat in an open compartment on the 
roof, whence one had a delightful view of the country — somewhat 
flavored and ^obscured by smoke from the engine, Ishmaers seat 
was again remote from the corner occupied by Paquerette. Her eyes 
were clouded with tears of disapj^intment and vexation. The land- 
scape had lost all its charms ; the veiy scent of the acacias was hate- 
ful. She could see nothing but frivolity and silliness in the delight 
of the Benoit girls as the train crossed the river by Asni^res. The 
lighted town, which would have seemed to her a magical thing had 
she been in her right mind, was only a something strange that had 
no charm for her. 

The party broke up at the terminus. Tlie Morices, the Dulacs, 
and Ishmael went their W’ay ; and the other four, under convoy of big 
Lisbeth, plunged fearlessly into the dark and narrow streets which 
in those days lay between the station and the Faubourg St. Antoine. 

This walk was long, and Paquerette was passing weary by the 
time they got to the Eue Sombreuil. She found the old people in an 
unusually amiable temper. The charabia had dropped in to supper, 
and had brought a knuckle of ham in his pocket, and had paid for 
a saladier of red wine a la francaise, and the entertainment was at 
its most cheerful stage when Paquerette came in. 

“ AVell, little Bag, hast thou enjoyed thyself with thy bourgeois 
friends, thy grocers and resi:)ectabilities of Menilmontant ? ” asked 
Pere Lemoine. “ Hast thou had a pleasant day yonder ? ” 

“ I have had a horrid day ; I am tired to death,” cried Paquerette 
pee\ishly. 

She threw the basket — IshmaeTH gift— into a corner, flung herself 
into a clumsy old wooden chair with a ragged rush seat, covered her 
face with her hands, and bust into tears. 

The trolleur and his wife looked at each other with a grave sig- 
nificance, half shocked, half amused. The idea of both was that 
Paquerette had been given a little too much wine — elle avait sa 
iminte, pauvre petite. 

For these two there was only one ruling passion — the love of the 
bottle. As they looked at Paquerette, white, tearful, they had no 
apprehension of that other question w^hich has its influence upon 
the minds and ways of men and women ; as strong, and even inore 
fatal than the craving for strong drink. 

The charabia had a keener eye for the situation. 

“Perhaps her sweetheart has not behaved well,” ho said. “Say 
then, little Paquerette, say, thou, my i)retty pale flower, hast thou a 
sweetheart already, and has he begun to play thee false at the very 
beginning?” 

He went across the room and chucked Paquerette under the chin 
wi^^li his fat forefinger. The very touch seemed pollution. 


/ 

88 AN ISIIMAELITE. 

Slio sprang to her feet, looked at him with eyes aflame, and cheeks 
white with m’ath. 

“ How dare yon?” she cried, then rnshed.past him and locked 
herself in her little closet of a bedchamber — the room to which her 
mother had crept back to die. 

“ Qnelle diablesse ! ” exclaimed the charabia, shrugging liis broad 
shoulders, and going quietly back to his seat to renew his attack 
upon the saladier. 


OHAPTEK XI. 

HOW A MAN CAN DIE FOE TWENTY-FIVE FEANCS. 

Sebastian Caradec — otherwise Ishmael — was a man of fixed and 
steadfast mind. Once having resolved within himself that Puque- 
rette was no wife for him — that he would bring disgrace and dis- 
honor on his house were he to choose a wife of the trolleur’s blood, 
he made it his business to see no more of the pale, wild-flower face, 
the pleading blue eyes, with their pathetic look, which had re- 
minded him of a little thing he had read in a magazine, translated 
from an English writer — the sentimental reverie of a i^hilosophic 
gentleman upon a caged starling, which fluttered against the bars 
of its cage, reiterating its piteous cry, “I can’t get out, I can’t get 
out.” 

To his fancy Paquerette’s pathetic eyes had pleaded, just as the 
starling pleaded, for release from a cruel captivity — the bondage of 
squalid x^overty and vicious surroundings. 

He was sony for her — he admired her — but the divine si^ark was 
not kindled in his breast. He was heart whole and could afford to 
renounce her. But he did not easily forget her. The vision of her 
radiant face in the wood, illumined with the rapture of a new haj)- 
Xnness, haunted him often. Still he was steadfast. 

Mine. Morice invited him to join in two or three more Sunday 
afternoon pleasure trijis before the summer and early autumn were 
over ; but on each occasion he x^leaded business or an engagement 
of some kind, and so the year wore on and time and chance brought 
about no meeting between him and Paquerette. 

He was full of occupation at this period ; his life was crowded 
with interests. His ardor as politician, rejiublican, reformer, had in- 
creased with every week of his residence in Paris. He had caught 
the siiirit of the time, which was ardent, eager, expectant of change. 
The men of the Left were for the most jiart young men, idealists, 
impossible-ists, impetuous, daring; and youth among the working- 
classes was fired by the sparks which flashed from the Eepublican 
jiarty in the Senate. 

The men who make the revolutions of Paris are not always 
Parisians ; indeed, it is a fact to be noted that the men who achieve 
great things, either in politics or commerce in a metroxiolis, are 
rarely men born and bred in that mctrox^olis. It is the xu’ovince — 

4 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


SO 


tlio fresli, free air of mountain and sea — the wide w’astes of Gas- 
cogne— the moorlands of Berry — the hills of Auvergne — which send 
their ^dgorous young blood to do and dare in the capital. Seldom 
is it from the stones in the city that her soldiers and senators 
spring. 

Ishmael was intense in all things ; and, steei^ed in the ideas of his 
club, he became before December as ardent a Eepublican as any 
of those of the Tiers-Etat who helped to make the Eevolution in 
1789 . ^ 

He had sat at the feet of such teachers as Victor Hugo and Louis 
Blanc. He had spoken on the side of the people ; and he believed 
in the divine right of the people, as against the right of kings. 

Going to his work in the chill dawn of the second of December, 
there was nothing in the air of Belleville or Menilmontant to tell 
Sebastian Caradec that a great political convulsion, that a daring 
cast for empire had been begun during the night ; that under the 
cover of darkness, statesmen and generals, the senators of France, 
had been surprised in their beds by an armed police, bound and 
gagged and carried out of their homes, amidst the shrieking of agon- 
ized wives, the tears of scared children — carried off on the first 
stage of the dismal journey to Mazas, Ham, or Cayenne. And yet 
this thing had been done. 

Last night a little scene, quiet — yet eminently dramatic, by rea- 
son of the repose, the reserved force of the chief actors — had been 
performed in the Palace of the Elysee, in a brilliantly lighted room, 
amid a crowd of guests. Late in the evening, the prince-presi- 
dent, leaning with his back against the mantelpiece in the large 
drawing-room, summoned Colonel Vieyra, the chief of staff, by a 
little look. 

“ Colonel, can you command your countenance if I tell you some- 
thing startling ? ” he asked, quietly. 

“ I think so, my piince.” 

“Good. It is for to-night. Can you assure me that to-morrow 
morning the drums shall not beat the rappel ? ” 

“ Assuredly ; if I have a sufficient staff under my orders.” 

This instruction was obeyed to the letter. Before morning tho 
parchment of every drum had been split under the eyes of Vieyra. 

“ See Saint Arnaud,” said the prince ; “ and at six o’clock to-mor- 
row be at headquarters. Let no member of the National Guard go 
out in uniform.” 

The president and the colonel separated after this conversation, 
which had not attracted any attention. 

At the same hour M. de’Morny— friend, kinsman, xiartisan of tho 
Gallic Caesar — was flitting from box to box at the Ojiera Comique, 
full of small talk and high sx)irits — courtier, man of the world, 
viveur, dijilomatist, cynic — the most fascinating, the cleverest, the 
most dangerous man in France. , ^ 

“ People tell me that the Pi-esident of the Eepublic is going to 
make a clean sweeji of the chamber,” said the wife of Louis Phi- 
lippe’s officer, as de Morny bent over her chair during the entr’acte. 
“ What is to become of you? ” 


90 


AN ISIIMAELITE, 


“If the broom is to be used, madame, I hope I shall be on the side 
of the handle,” answered de Morny lightly. 

The last visitor had departed from the Elysee, and Louis Napoleon 
went to his study, where de Morny, Saint Arnaud, de Maupas, and 
Mocquard were waiting for him. Mocquard was devoted to the 
prince — bound to him by old associations of the tenderest character. 
Caesar’s secrets could not be in safer hands. Thus it was Mocquard 
who had prepared the portfolio which contained the papers — list of 
names, plan of action, and, above all, the sinews of war, in the 
shape of several millions of francs advanced by the Bank of France 
— necessary to the successful issue of the drama which was to bo 
begun to-night. XJx)on this portfolio was inscribed the mystic w'ord 
Rubicon. 

The second of December, 1851, might be called the Day of Pro- 
testations. In the High Court of Paris seven judges of the highest 
jurisdiction sat in solemn assembly and protested against the flagrant 
violation of the Constitution, and summoned the chief of the State 
to appear before them, charged with the crime of high treason. But 
the action of the law is slow% and, individually, from the human 
standpoint of intense hatred of Cavaignac and the Reds, the seven 
judges w'ere all friendly to Prince Louis Napoleon. The proceed- 
ings of the High Court were therefore adjourned until the following 
day, and this solemn conclave produced only protest number one. 
Latest example of mountain and mouse. 

Protest number two was signed by the members of the State 
Council. 

Protest number three emanated from the journalists of Paris, who 
could not remain neutral when national interests were at stake. With 
some difficulty they met at the office of the Siecle and agreed to the 
terms of their protestation, which w’as covered w itli signatures ; but 
wiien it came to the question of printing this protest, the voice of 
the national press, the interpretation of popular feeling, there were 
insurmountable difficulties. 

The iron hand of Ciesar had barred every printing office, in 
Paris. 

“Why w’aste powder upon protestations?” cried Emile de Girar- 
din. “ Go and shut up the Bourse. That is the thing to be done.” 

Later he had a wuder proposition — a universal strike. No trades- 
man to sell his goods ; no artisan to w^ork ; stagnation — starvation — ■ 
the stillness of a city stnick with death — till the outraged senators 
were set at liberty and the authority of the violated chamber was 
restored. 

Neither of these ideas was put into action. Bakers will bake and 
sell their bread ; butchers will kill ; the beaten round of daily life 
will go on, albeit the Constitution — an abstract noun wffiich has 
different meanings in the minds of different people— may be tiW- 
l^led under foot. 

Ishmael left his work yonder by Belle^dlle and went into the heart 
of Paris. The Boulevard des Italiens W’as in those days the forum 
<)f the Parisians and here on the steps in front of Tortoni’s, which 
served as the tribune, the fever of expectation, doubt, suspicion. 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


91 


was at its height. Yet it was not a violent fever. Paris took the 
coiip-d’etat very lightly so far. 

The middle classes were undecided ; the j^eople were doubtful. 
The Faubourg Saint Antoine, even — once the very altar of liberty, 
the cradle of revolution — was as quiet as the gi-ave. A sluggish 
dulness seemed to have crept over the spirits of the working- 
classes — a timid acceptance of things as they were — a fear of upset- 
ting a line of statecraft which seemed to be working for the material 
comfort and prosperity of the artisan. Even the ebenistes were in- 
different, and had to be lashed and stung into action by the elo- 
quence of Victor Hugo, the earnestness of Schoelcher and Baudin. 
TTie disinterested love of liberty, for its own sake, was to be found 
only among these representatives of the Left — still free to move 
about among their fellow-men, brandishing the torch of revolution, 
calling to the very stones of Paris to rise against the tyrant ; still 
free, but already under the ban, and obliged to meet together in 
secret, afraid to seek the shelter of their own homes. 

The brief winter day wore on to its early close. Twice during 
that day the prince-president showed himself to the people — as it 
were between the acts of the drama. He left the Elysee on horse- 
back, accompanied by his marshals — a brilliant cavalcade — and rode 
as far as the Hue de Eivoli. It has been said that he expected one 
of those outbursts of enthusiasm from the ix)pulace which carry a 
man to the throne — taken off his legs, as it were, and swej)t on to 
the royal platform by the irresistible flood-tide of public feeling. 
But there was no such ovation, and the prince went back to the 
Elysr^e, to show himself again late in the afternoon, when the ac- 
clamations were more numerous. 

At four o’clock the Eepublican party — disturbed at their first 
rendezvous, driven from pillar to post by nimors of the police on 
their track — met for deliberation in a house on the Quai de Jem- 
mapes. A committee of resistance was named, the eloquent voice, 
the fiery spirit of which was Victor Hugo ; and late that night the 
same party, swollen by many additional members, met secretly in 
the workshops of Frederic Courn et, in the Rue de Popincourt ; Vic- 
tor Hugo in the chair, Baudin, a brave and bold spirit, Hugo’s junior 
by ten years, seated at the master-spirit’s side, as secretary. 

"Au armed resistance was the sole idea of the assembly. 

“Listen,” cried Victor Hugo. “Bear in mind what you are 
doing. On one side a hundred thousand men, batteries, arsenals, 
cannon, munitions of war sufficient for another Russian campaign. 
On the other side a hundred and twenty representatives of the people, 
a thousand or so of patriots, six hundred muskets. Not a drum to 
beat the rappel. Not a bell to sound the tocsin. Not a press to 
l^rint a jn’oclamation. Only here and there a lithographi(* workshop, 
a cellar, where a placard may be produced hastily, with a brush. 
Death to any man who takes "up a x>aving stone in the street ; death 
to all who meet as agitators ; death to any man who placards an ap- 
peal to arms. If you are arrested during the fight— death ; if after 
the fight— transportation. On one side, the army and a crime, on 


92 


AN ISHMAELITB. 


the other side, a handful of men and the right. These are the odds 
against yon. Do yon accept the challenge ? ” 

A nnaiiimons cry responded to the appeal. Yes, against any odds 
— yes, in the teeth of the tyrant — face to face with death, the men of 
the Left were ready. 

It was midnight when the assembly decided that the Reds should 
meet to-morrow morning in the Cafe Roysin in front of the Marche 
Lenoir — the representatives of the people in the bosom of the peo- 
ple ; in the arms of the artisan class — relying on the courage and the 
energy of that people to bring to bear an overwhelming force of op- 
position against the armed might of the usurper. 


The Rue Sainte Marguerite is unique after its kind, and claims 
distinction as one of the most horrible streets in Paris. It is the 
chosen abode of the rag-pickers, mendicants, organ-grinders, mon- 
key-men, epileptics, blind, lepers, deaf and dumb, the dealers in 
tortoise-shell combs and brass watchguards. The Bohemia of a new 
Court of Miracles has its rendezvous here. Hence they sally forth, 
these jovial beggars of modern Paris, the blind and the lame, the 
maimed and the dumb, joyous, fresh, hearty, in the early morning, 
each going to his post, his particular corner on bridge or at church 
door, their faces not yet composed into the professional aspect, the 
lugubrious droop of the lips yet unassumed ; for here they are still 
en faim'lle, still behind the scenes. The play begins a little later. 

In the early morning, while the beggars and saltimbanques issue 
forth to their daily rounds, the Rue Sainte Marguerite is alive with 
the return of the rag-pickers. From all sides — by the Rue de 
Charonne, by the faubourg, by the Rue de Vaucanson, the Rue 
Crozatier — they come, drooping under their burdens, preceded by 
loathsome odors, stumbling and slouching along the muddy path- 
ways,- tremulous, staggering, back aching, eyes dim with the long 
labors of a night spent in going up and down the streets, stooi^ing a 
thousand times under their heavy load to exx)lore a heap of foulest 
refuse. The lanterns swing feebly upon the ends of the long sticks, 
expiring in a stench of rancid oil. Silently, wearily, the rag-pickers 
crawl to their dens, while the cheery mountebanks jog gayly on to 
begin a new day. 

Heavens, what a street ! black, dismal, malodorous ; wundows 
whose rotten woodwork has long forgotten the sensation of glass ; 
windows choked with straw, rags, paper, what you will. Mud 
always, even when the rest of Paris is clean. Mist and dampness 
always, even when the better parts of Paris are bright and clear. 
Disease always in more or less revolting form. Hunger always — ■ 
never enough to eat, yet always, strange paradox, too much to 
drink. MTien it is a question of bread or trois-six, the chiffonnier 
prefers his trois-six. Can you blame him ? Every bone in his bodv 
is familiar to him as a sensation of ])ain. The bread could do him 
so little good. But the vile spirit burns, and that is something. 

The angle formed by the junction of the Rue Sainte Marguerite 
and the Rue de la Cotte, was the scene of the one heroic act in the 


AN ISmiAELITE. 


9:5 


liistoiy of the coup d’etat. Here was erected the first barricade. 
Here Baudin fell. 

There was an air of fatality in all the circumstances of that first 
barricade. There had been a misunderstanding last night as to the . 
hour of the meeting at the Cafe Boysin. A minority of Victor 
Hugo’s party arrived at the rendezvous at eight o’clock. The 
majority understood the hour to be from nine to ten. The cafe was 
a large building with high windows and looking-glasses against the 
wall, the usual marble tables, plenty of seats, several billiard-tables 
in the middle of the apartment. 

The representatives were received with a friendly air. They were 
soon joined by a number of strangers, all as earnest as themselves. 
There were workmen among them, but no blouses. The artisans 
had been requested to wear coats, lest the shopkeepers should take 
fright at the aspect of the blouse as a badge of revolution. The 
horrors of ’48 were still fresh in the minds of the middle classes. 

Among these men of the Faubourg Saint Antoine was Ishmael, 
who had cast in his lot with the Reds. He had come to Paris when 
the memory of ’48 was still fresh in the minds of men ; and his 
young and ardent temper saw the struggle for liberty in its noblest 
aspect. He read the writings of Hugo and Schoelcher, whose arti- 
cles in the Republican paj^ers had done much to kindle the fire of 
enthusiasm in the minds of the people. And now, in the cold, 
rainy, December morning, through the muddy streets, he came to 
cast in his lot with those gallant spirits who, against overwhelming 
odds, were to try the question of Liberty versus Despotism. 

Granted that the despot’s rule may have been in the main Imtter 
for France ; that from the chaos of divided opinions it was well that 
one man should stand forth — daring, enlightened, judicious — and 
take his place boldly at the helm of the national bark ; still, look- 
ing back at those three dark December days, who can doubt that the 
true heroism, the purer love of country, was to be found among that 
handful of men who flung themselves into the arms of the peoifie 
and challenged that people to defend their violated rights ? 

Unhappily for these heroes of the Left, the artisan class was cold 
to the voice of patriotism. The reiu-esentatives of the Right had 
been disliked and feared, suspected as Royalists, Reactionists, and 
no one was offended at the idea of their having all been whisked off 
to prison, plucked out of their beds in the dead of night, turned out 
of their seats in the chamber, carted about from pillar to post by 
their captors, like sheep carried to the market. 

It is difficult to conceive what would be the effect upon English 
society if the household troops were to swoop down upon the House 
of Commons and carry a troublesome majority off to the Tower. 
Yet this sweeping out of the French chamber by a military force 
hardly seems to have created surprise or indignation among the 
populace of Paris. They thought the clearing out of the senators a 
good riddance ; and as they were given to understand that it meant 
the establishment of universal suffrage, the general feeling was at 
the outset in favor of the Dictator. 

While the little Imot of Reds were waiting for the rest of their 


nsHMSHHfsnnmHB 



94 


/liV ISlIMATrilTn. 


pai-tv in front of the Cafe Eoysin, an omnihns came along at a sharp 
trot, escorted by a squadron of lancers, and filled ’«dth those mem- 
bers of the chamber who had sjrent the night miserably, nnder 
watch and ward, at the D’Orsay Barracks, and who were now being 
carried off to Vincennes. 

In an instant there arose a ciy from the men of the Left ; “ They 
are the representatives of the people ! Save them ! ” There was a 
dash at the horses’ heads, and vigorous hands caught the bridles. 
The first omnibus was stopped, the door was opened ; but the pris- 
oners, instead of alighting, entreated their would-be liberators 
to let them alone. They would rather go to prison than be so res- 
cued. 

A scornful laugh broke from the workmen who had stood by 
looking on at the attempted rescue ; and this exhibition of ijoltroon- 
ery on the part of their senators may have helped to damp their 
ardor in the brief struggle which followed. 

Baudin was a medical man, better known to the workmen of the 
Faubourg Poissonniere than to those of Saint Antoine. An eloquent 
speaker, an honest man, the chief voice now in the little knot of 
Beds waiting the advent of their colleague^. Ishmael had heard 
him speak on many occasions and honored him. He drew near his 
elbow now, waiting to see what w'as going to happen, his pulses 
beating high, ready to help with heart and hand in the work that 
was to be done. Baudin knew him by sight and knew him to be a 
stanch Eepublican. He gave him a friendly nod as he stood talking 
to one of his colleagues. 

There was an impatience to do something — and not wait for the 
others. Baudin would fain have waited till their numbers were 
stronger ; but he yielded to the eagerness of Schoelcher and the 
others, all on fire for the fray. 

Among a hundred and fifty men they were able, by disarming 
the sentinels at the two nearest guard-houses, to distribute thirty 
muskets, the soldiers abandoning their arms until a friendly erv of 
*‘Vive la Eepublipie!” A cart cariying manure approached ‘the 
Eue Sainte Marguerite at the angle where it joins the Eue Cotte. 
The cart was thrown over, the barricade was begun. A baker’s cart 
followed ; then a milkwoman’s cart, strong, heavy; finally an omni- 
bus. The four vehicles jilaced in line were hardly broad enough to 
bar the main street to the faubourg. Empty baskets were heaped 
on the toji. The handful of representatives in Vheir tricolored sc ar ves, 
the handful of their friends, Ishmael among them, took their slami 
on the bari-icade just as a boy rushing along the street shouted, 
“ The troops ! ” and the steady tramp of men, the jingle of arms 
was heard drawing nearer and nearer. 

Two companies wm-e coming from the Bastile, mai’shailed in at 
equal distances, and bamng the entire street. Doors and windows 
%Vere shut precipitately. The critical moment had come. 

“ Citizens,” said Schcelcher, “ let no shot be fired. AYhen the 
army and city fight it is the blood of the people that is shed on both 
sides. Let us first address the soldiers.” 

“ Down with the twenty-five francs ! ” cried a gi’oup of blouses at 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


05 


the corner of the Eue Sainte Marguerite, alluding scornfully to the 
salary of the representatives. 

Baudin looked at the men steadily from his post on the barricade. 

“You shall see how a man can die for twenty-five francs,” he 
said. 

The two columns of soldiers were now in sight of the barricade, 
and behind them in the distance gleamed the bayonets of another 
troop. 

Steadily, slowly, the two companies advanced upon the barri- 
cade ; and then, the frightened inhabitants, peering from their closed 
windows, the lukewarm loungers on the pavement, beheld a noble 
spectacle. . 

Seven representatives of the people, with no other defence than 
their official scarves, came in front of the barricade and approached 
the soldiers, who waited for them with their muskets pointed, 
while the rest of the party manned the barricade — Baudin standing 
upon the overturned omnibus, the upper half of his figure exposed 
to the attack. 

Then followed a dialogue between Schoelcher and an officer in com- 
mand — resolute, intrepid on both sides. The Reimblican senator 
urged the majesty of the violated law— called upon the soldier to 
respect the constitution. The soldier recognized no law beyond the 
orders of his superior. 

“Gentlemen of the chamber,” said the cajjtain finally, “retire, 
or I shall give the command to fire.” 

“Fire ! ” cried one of the seven. Then, as at Fontenoy, the repre- 
sentatives of the i^eople took off their hats and faced the levelled 
muskets. 

“Charge bayonets!” cried the captain ; and there was a move- 
ment forward ; but the soldiers shrunk from wounding these un- 
armed men, as from a double treason ; because they were the repre- 
sentatives of the people, and because they were defenceless. Not 
a blow was struck, not a shot was fired, till, by an unhappy acci- 
dent, the point of a bayonet hit Schoelcher and tore his scarf. The 
act was seen from tlie barricade, and one of the Reds, believing his 
colleague in danger, fired, and hit the soldier, who fell, shot through 
the heart. He was a conscript, a lad of eighteen. This fatal sliot 
was the signal for a volley from the soldiers. They stormed the 
barricade ; Baudin was killed, and the barricade taken. 

Let it be noted that the soldiers — they who were to-morrow to riot 
ill a carnival of murder — had, up to this point, acted with singular 
forbearance. They took no prisoners ; the defenders of the barri- 
cade were allowed to disperse quietly in the surrounding streets, and 
to find a friendly refuge in neighboring houses. So far the army 
was blameless. But on this morning of the third the men were still 
sober. • The money distributed with sucli liberal hand among the 
soldiery had not yet begun to be spent on that liquid fire, which, 
later, transformed veterans and lads alike into madmen, murderers, 
demons almost as deadly as the cojiiier-faced assassins of Delhi and 
Caynpore. 


05 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


CHAPTEE XIL 
“qu’on execute mes okdkes.” 

Islimael was among the last to leave the scene of that short, sharp 
struggle. He helped to carry the expiring Baiidin to the hospital 
of Sainte Marguerite. He was one of those who lifted the body of 
the young conscript from the muddy, trampled ground in front of 
the barricade — a slender, boyish figure, buttoned to the chin in the 
gi-ay military overcoat, one red stain upon the heart showing where 
the bullet had gone home. This dismal work over, Ishmael loitered 
about the faubourg, disheartened, stupefied almost by the sight of 
those two dead faces, one of which, aflame with the fire of patriot- 
ism, ennobled by the power of intellect, had been so familiar to him 
in life. The conflict had but just begun — feebly, hopelessly begun 
— and already one of the best and bravest of Liberty’s champions 
had fallen ! 

Not since his mother’s death until to-day had Ishmael looked 
upon the face of the dead. He turned from the hosjrital door with 
a strange, dream-like feeling — a sense of hardly belonging to the 
actual world around him. 

* “ AVhat would it matter to any one if I were lying beside Doctor 
Baudin ? ” Ishmael asked himself, with a shrug of his broad shoul- 
ders. “My father would never know my fate, perhaps, or if he 
heard of it would hardly be sorry. My step-mother would be glad, 
and my brothers — well, poor little lads, they are young enough to 
have forgotten me before now. A year is a long time in their little 
lives. It would be too much to expect to be remembered after such 
an inteiwal.” 

He took a draught of wine at a shop in the Hue de la Eoquette, 
and as he was going out of the door brushed against an old man 
whose face was familiar to him, although he did not remember 
where or when they had met. 

The other was keener, and remembered Ishmael perfectly. 

“ Good-day, citizen ; grand doings yonder by the gentlemen in 
scarves,” he said ; “ but we want no more barricades ; the faubourg 
has had enough fighting ; we want a quiet life, and to be paid fairly 
for our work, and to take our drop of little blue in peace.” 

Ishmael remembered him now\ It was the old trolleur, 
Puquerette’s grandfather. He had been drinking already, though 
it was not yet noon, and was in a cheery state. Ishmael would fain 
have passed him with briefest greeting, but the old man laid a grimy 
claw upon his sleeve. “ If you were going to crack a bdttle of 
Medoc, or to rinse your beak with fine cham])agne, for example. 
I’m with you,” he said. “Let us enjoy ourselves as good com- 
rades. ” 

Ishmael was obviously leaving the shop, but he was not of a tcm- 
i:>er to refuse a drink, even to this old vagabond. 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


07 


“I shall drink no more this morning,” he said, ‘‘bnt I’ll nav for 
whatever you please to order.” 

Influeuced more by a desire to hear of Pilquerette than from a Avish 
to be cm\ to the ebSniste Ishmael turned bach into tlie little wine 
shop and seated lumself at a table opposite P6re Lemoine. 

l.-cT,; f • 1 'ras brought, a bright, oily, velloAV 

liquid Inch sjiarkled like a gleam of sunshine against the dull o-r‘>v 
winter hgait. Ihe waiter put a couple of glasses beside the borif/ 
and Pere Lemoine filled both. 

“^on’t be frightened. You sliall 

call harnf 'LTo?^ ^ ^ of such thimblefuls 

f,wL 1 you have had your barricade yonder, my 

fiiend you have had your finger in the revolutionaiT pie ; and for 
the only result one of the best of your Eeds has been shot ; he has 
T and what are any of you the better ^ 

no more barricades, my friend. I have seen too 
many of them, and I know how little comes of the fuss and bother 
feainb Antoine is wise by experience. Victor Hugo and his friends 
may serm^onize till they are hoarse, but thev won’t rouse the fau- 
bourg. lo your health. Monsieur Ishmael, out of glass 
one ; and now to my health from Monsieur Ishmael. ' number 
two ; ” and the old toper swallowed the contents glasses with- 

out winking. 

■‘There may be other faiibo«z-s« more patriotic,” answered Ish- 
mael ; “ there may be those who will avenge the blood of Baudin. 
But don’t let us talk iiolitics. The subject is not the safest ; and you 
must remember that I am a newcomer, and have hardly had time to 
form my opinion. Tell me about your granddaughter. Mademoi- 
selle Paquerette. She is well, I hope ? ” 

“ She is well. She had need be well. She is on the high road to 
good fortune. An honest man — a bourgeois, with a shop in this 
very street, and a snug little nest behind his shoji, and a back-yard 
to store his goods, such a man as one does not meet every day in the 
Rue Sombreuil, has asked her to be his wife.” 

Ishmael started with a sudden touch of pain. He had never been 
in love with Paquerette. He had existed for nearly six months 
without seeing the pale, snowdrop face ; and yet his heart sunk 
within him at the thought that another man was to ]iluck the pearl 
out of the gutter, this gem which he had not stooped to gather out 
of the mire, too careful lest his hands should be soiled in the pro- 


cess. Truly it were hardly a pleasant thing to have this P&re Le- 
moine here, whose unsteady hand was now in the act of pouring out 
a fourth glass of fine champagne, for one’s grandfather-in -law. 

“I am glad that Mademoiselle Pdquerette is to have such a good 
husband,’' said Ishmael. “ Pray, who is the gentleman?” 

“A friend of mine who has done business "with me for twenty 
years ; an Auvergnat-^a hard-working saving creature, who, begin- 
ning in tlie humblest way, has saved enough money to set up as a 
dealer in furniture and curiosities — a fine trade always — and whose 
first thought, worthy soul ! on beginning life in his own house, was 
to ask Paquerette to be his wife.” 


OS 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


“ An Anvergnat ; your cliarabia, I suppose ? ” exclaimed Islimael 
disgusted. “Why, that is the man whom Paquerette abhors; at 
least she told me so six months ago.” 

“ She is a child and does not know her own mind. She likes him 
well enough now, I can tell you.” 

“ But you say he has been doing business for twenty years. He 
must be forty years of age ? ” 

‘ ‘ Suppose he is forty ! What harm is there in forty years, do you 
think ? ” cried the trolleur, smacking his lips over the fine champagne 
and sending little gusts of fiery breath across the table toward 
Ishmael. “A man at forty is in his prime. I am forty and twenty- 
seven years on the top of forty, and I am in my prime. Bring me 
no schoolboy bridegrooms for my granddaughter. I want a sensible 
man, a man who knows how to rule a wife. I mariied when I was 
five-and-twenty, and I have been sony for it ever since. A man 
should be master from the first.” 

“ I hope you are not going to sell your granddaughter to this 
charabia, as you have sold youi* furniture,” said Islimael gravely. 

“ My faith ! he shall jiay me a fair price for her,” said the trolleur, 
fresii® was becoming a little more vivid with every 

** What is the use of a girl like that if one cannot turn 
oTir.T.^.1 ^ her? She has eaten and drunk at my cost long 

I some one else to pay for her living, and 

to make a handsome present .. r,., grandfather into the bargai^.” 

said “aiTiage upon niadamoiselle,” 

said Ishmael, clinking a glass against the bottle as a summons to the 
waiter, and as a gentle hint that he did not mean to pay for any 
more brandy. ^ 

The waiter came, sointinized the bottle, which was marked in 
measured degrees like a thermometer, a downward scale which 
might be taken as emblematic of the descent of Avernus, and took 
payment for Pere Lemoine’s four glasses. 

nnlVT® ” upon her ! Why, the child is as proud as a 

queen at getting such a husband— a shop in the Eue de la Eoquette 

the Tuileries are not better fui-nished 
than Jean Baugiste 3 little salon, all in mahogany, of the Empire 
style substantial, splendid; a gilded clock and candelabra on 'the 
TdnSf V f belonged to Talleyrand, a room fit for 

foiled the JrlT ^ gi-^“'l“otber and I have 

S? f VC ! tv i "'y “ see for youi-- 

sell II you think we are ill-using her.” ^ 

“ “ement or so, while he mechanically 
counted the change out of his two-franc piece. After all, Paque- 
rette s mamage was no business of his. He had made up his mind 
Hst midsummer that she was no fitting wife for him. Bid lm ra- 
niffid’ ’ tu Paquerette had spoken of the charabia on that May 
night, when they two had walked from Vincennes; he recalled her 
shudder as she confessed her hatred of the man, a hatred which she 

PAaimrX • butlAic * n* ^ a suitor for 

I aquerette , but if he could save her from an odious marriage, de- 


AN I8HMAELITE. 99 

fend her from the tyranny of this dmnken scoundrel of a grand- 
father, he would do it, even at some cost to himself. 

“ I should like to see mademoiselle, and congratulate her on her 
marriage,” he said quietly, “ if my visit will not trouble you.” 

“ Come along, then ; we are sure to find the little hussy at home. 
She does nothing all day but roll one thumb round the other, and 
listen to any organ-grinder who comes our way.” 

The trolleur sauntered along the street by Ishmael’s side, with the 
easy rolling walk of a man who has spent half his life in sauntering 
idleness, always more or less allume. He seemed to know almost 
every one he passed, and saluted his acquaintances -with a friendly 
nod. Most of the shops were closed, and there were a good many 
people in the streets ; but the faubourg had a quiet air, almost a Sab- 
bath day tranquillity. 

“ Saint Antoine sleeps,” said Pere Lemoine. 

Ishmael and his companion walked on to the Rue Sombreuil. 
The gloomy old courtyard looked more like a stone well than ever 
on this dark and cheerless winter afternoon. The rain and the 
trampling to and fro of many feet had made the stony pavement 
muddy and slopi:>y. Rank odors of sewage, soup, and fricot per- 
vaded house and yard. 

The trolleur marched straight into his den, followed by Ishmael. 

Paquerette W’as sitting on a three-legged wooden stool by the fire, 
plucking a cabbage for the family pot-au-feu. She was much 
smarter than of old. She wore a bright blue stuff gown, and a coral 
necklace and earrings ; but the small delicate face had less color 
than ever, and when she started up from her low seat at the entrance 
of Ishmael the poor little face looked ghastly white above the red 
necklace and blue gown. 

“Here’s a suiquise for you, my cabbage,” said the trolleur. 
“ Mademoiselle Benoit’s friend has come to see you.” 

Ishmael went across the room and offered Paquerette his hand. 
Her slender fingers were as cold as ice and trembled in his clasp. 

“Your grandfather tells me that you are soon to be married, 
mademoiselle,” he said. ‘ ‘ I hope it is going to be a happy marriage. ” 

The girl looked first at him and then at lier grandfather with an 
indescribable expression, which might mean fear, grief, shyness, 
anything. 

“Grandfather says so,” she faltered, after a long pause, looking at 
the ground. 

“And I hope your husband that is to be is a good man.” 

“ Grandfather says he is,” she murmui’ed, her eyes still on the 
ground. 

“ And grandfather knows the world, my little cat,” said the trol- 
leur, with an exaggerated air of cheery benevolence. “Grandfather 
will not many thee to a rogue, be sure of that. An Auvergnat, a 
true son of the mountain, simple, hardy, honest, a man who has 
yu’ospered by patient industry, by temperance — Oh, it is a beautiful 
thing, temperance !— self-denial, perseverance, and who deserves to 
enjoy his prosperity with a pretty young wife to keep him company. 
How can a girl hope for a better husband than that ? If he had 


1 


100 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


been made expressly for her he could not be more suitable. And 
how he adores her ! why, the very ground she walks upon is sacred 
in his eyes. And how generous, too. Look at her new gown — his 
gift ; her eanings, her necklace — his gifts. Not an evening passes 
that he does not bring us something nice for supper ; such rigoladcs 
as we have every night ! ” 

The girl said not a word, made no protest against her gi’and- 
father’s fine talk. She was content to wear the charabia’s gifts ; and 
doubtless she was prepared to accept him as a husband. 

The grandmother came in from market, bringing a piece of beef 
for the pot-au-feu, while Ishmael lingered. She, too, was in excel- 
lent spirits. She had loitered in the streets to hear what was said 
about this attempt at revolt. She had gone as far as the Morgue 
with the crowd, who accompanied the slain conscript in his journey 
from the hospital to the dead-house. “Poor Plon-jdon,” she said, 
wiping away a tear. M. Baudin was to remain at the hosi)ital till 
his friends came to fetch him. She had been told that he made a 
beautiful corpse, calm as one who slept. 

Ishmael turned from her with a feeling of disgust. Was this the 
mighty heart of Saint Antoine? Was this all that was left of the 
burning patriotism of ’48 ? — this spirit of idle curiosity, of gossip, of 
indifference to all the loftier aspects of a great national struggle, the 
everlasting conflict of might against right. 

He was still more disheartened and disgusted by his brief inter- 
view with Pdquerette. The girl looked weak and foolish, a creature 
born to be a slave, fit for nothing better than to be sold to the high- 
est bidder. That coral necklace reminded him of a halter. He had 
seen a young heifer in the market place at Dol Avith just that meek, 
foolish air, Avaiting for the butcher who was to buy her. 

Ishmael went from the Faubourg Saint Antoine to the neighbor- 
hood of the markets, under the shadoAV of that mighty sixteenth 
century church, which stands where once rose the Temple of Cybele. 
Here he found more excitement, more emotion than in the red region 
of the Bastile. Barricades, or sketches of barricades, were being- 
raised in several streets ; but there Avas Avant of animation and a Avant 
of unanimity. The artist classes, the thinkers, the dreamers, Avere 
roused and ready for action ; but the masses had not caught fire. 
The workingmen of Paris, grown prudent Avith prosperity, shinink 
from the risk of the conflict, and left their interests, rights, "liberties, 
independence, to be fought for and bled for by a handful of patriots. 
Late into the night of December the 3d those patriots were assem- 
bled in a house in the Eue Bichelieu. Ishmael and two or three 
other Avorkmen guarded the door of their council-room, ready to die 
in defence of those faithful tribunes of the people. On the boule- 
vards, at the BoAU’se, among the loungers and saunterers in broad- 
cloth and fine linen, the coup d’etat was taken lightly enough on 
this third day of December. The Assembly had been someAvhat 
roughly dissolved ; but who cared for the fate of an assembly AAdiich 
Avas eminently unpopular ? 

The 4th of December began quietly enough eveiywhere, but be- 
fore noon there were a good many barricades in that netAA-ork of 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


101 


streets around Saint Eustache. In the Rue Montorgueil, the Rue 
du Petit Carreau, the Rue de Cadran, and in other streets of the 
same quarter, the paving-stones had been plucked up and built into 
barricades, mixed with empty barrels, beams taken from houses in 
the progress of demolition ; great alterations were going on in this 
quarter, which was a place of change and confusion just now. The 
roadway yawned with pitfalls— hollows from which the stones had 
been dug out. There had been a good deal of rain, and in many 
places the streets were knee-deep in mud and slush. There had been 
lighting on the barricades, but not much before afternoon. There 
had been some deaths, Init not many. The soldiers were picketed 
under the shadow of Saint Eustache. 

On the boulevard all was calm. The idle classes had come out to 
see the fun ; husbands and wives, fathers and sons ; family groups 
looking on at what seemed to be a little puff of revolutionary fire, 
a faint stirring of deep waters — nothing to cause terror. 

Toward three o’clock a change came over the scene. From end 
to end tlie boulevards were choked with soldiers ; line regimeids, 
gendarmerie, brigades, cavalry ; a battery of four guns pointing shot 
and shell against the barricade in the Rue Saint Denis, which had 
been valiantly defended all day. The long, broad avenue, the 
lounging place, the forum of Paris, was crowded vath armed men — 
armed men evidently considerable the worse for strong drink — a fact 
which furnished no little amusement to the Parisians, who were 
walking up and down the muddy pavements enjoying the bustle and 
movement of the scene or looking down from the balconies at the 
crowd below. 

Suddenly (the soldiers all in marching order facing the gate of 
Saint Denis) a single shot was fired ; “ from the roof of a house in 
the Rue du Sen tier, ” cried some ; ‘ ‘ from a soldier in the middle of 
one of the battalions, who fired in the air,” said others ; and in an 
instant, as at an expected signal, the troops changed front, and then 
burst from the head of the column a running fire which extended 
through the ranks and flashed along the boulevard like an arrow of 
flame. Men, women, and children fled, or flung themselves flat 
upon the ground before that hailstorm of bullets. Windows, shut- 
ters, were closed in the wildest haste. But the harvest of dead and 
dying was not less rich. A child playing by a fountain— an old 
man of eighty— a woman with an infant in her arms, clasped close 
against her breast even in death ; the old, the middle-aged, the 
young, the harmless, the inoffensive population ; here a bookseller 
on tlie threshold of his shojr, tliere the marchand de coco, with his 
shining tin fountain. Gray hairs, childhood, womanhood — none 
were exempt from the slaughter. Those who escaped the bullet 
were sabred as they fell helpless at the feet of their murderers. 
Nothing less than the madness of strong drink could account for the 
ferocity of the soldiers during that hideous quarter of an hour wdien, 
in the open street, under the light of day, the horrors of St. Bar- 
tholomew’s eve were repeated before the eyes of an astonished pop- 
ulace, every member of which might be one moment a si3ectator and 
in the next a victim of the attack. 


102 


AN I8IIMAELITE. 


Dismal spectacle when there came a lull in the fusilade, and the 
inhabitants of the boulevards and the adjoining streets crept out of 
their doors to gather up the wounded and the dying, whom- none 
had hitherto dared to succor. The marchand de coco was lying in a 
corner by the wall, his white apron over his face, his glittering foun- 
tain on the ground beside him. He had come out hoping to do a 
brisk trade among the idlers on the boulevard, and the harvest he 
had gathered was death. Not far off lay an old man grasping an 
umbrella, his only defensive weapon, and a little way further a young 
flaneur, with a scarcely extinguished cigar between his lips, seemed 
still to smile with the half-amused expression of the fashionable 
IDessimist, for wdiom all the gravest questions in life have their far- 
cical aspect. 

Not far from the spot where lay youth, hope, birth, education, 
dressed in broadcloth, and come suddenly to a dead stop, like a 
watch whose wheels have run down, there lay, rolled in the gutter, 
blood-stained, mud-stained, with glassy eyes gazing up at the dark- 
ening winter sky in the fixed stare of death, age, poverty, disre2Jute, 
intem2:)erance, idleness, vagabondage, all 2)ersonified in Perc Le- 
moine, the trolleur, who had wandered far afield this December 
afternoon in quest of excitement, cimous to see what was going on 
upon the boulevards, and full of unholy gayety, j)leased to mix in a 
row, fearing no evil to himself from civilian or soldier, safe in his 
insignificance, looking on with his half-drunken cynical air, caring 
neither for Peter nor Paul. And in this idle humor, without a 
moment’s warning, with the first flash of arrowy flame from the 
muskets of the front rank, death had suiqDrised him. Struck down 
by that leaden rain, like an ear of corn laid in a hailstorm, he fell 
and rolled over and over into the gutter. There was no one to see 
him fall. He was carried off to the Morgue with a large batch of 
other corpses some hours later, there to await the attention of his 
friends. 

Those on the barricades yonder, under the shadow of Saint Eus- 
tache, were not slow to hear of the carnage. They had heard the 
fusilade, and took it at first for a triumphant salvo at the capitula- 
tion of the great barricade by St. Denis ; but there was a perpetual 
going and coming of patriots, and the particulars of the massacre 
were soon known in the neighborhood of the markets. The barri- 
cades were numerous enough to make the central x^oint a kind of 
citadel. Barricades in the Eue de Cadran, a barricade at each end 
of the Eue du Petit-Carreau, five in the Eue Montorgueil. Here 
and there an ambulance in an uninhabited house, or an emifiy cellar. 
— an ambulance consisting of two or three straw mattresses, an old 
woman as nurse and surgeon, and a child to make charpie. 

The loftiest and strongest of these barricades of the Eue Montor- 
gueil was well manned by about forty Eeds, mostly of the 2:)rofes- 
slonal classes, some who dug up the paving stones and helped in the 
construction of the barricade with gloved hands. There were only 
a few workmen among them, and those were the elite of the working 
class. It was here that Ishmael had cast in his lot, after fighting 
gallantly in the Faubourg Saint Martin all the morning. It was he 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


103 


wliose quick eye liad seen tlie advantages of this position, guarded 
as it was by two other boulevards, which made it a kind of citadel. 

They were joined presently by some fugitives from the boulevard, 
maddened by the massacre, wild for revenge. These told the story 
of the slaughter. One of them, who lived hard by, ran back to his 
house and returned with a tin baiTel full of cartridges. 

Darkness closed round them while they were still at work. They 
had told off twenty of their force, now swollen to a round fifty, for 
outpost duty. The soldiers were close at hand. A gleaming red 
light, shining now and again above the crowded roofs toward the 
markets, showed where the troops were holding their bivouac, drunk 
with blood and brandy. Sometimes the hoarse shout of a drinking 
song — the wild laughter of that armed multitude, came in a brief 
gust of sound across the housetops. They were merry yonder after 
the carnage. The bivouac had become an orgy. 

There was method in this madness, though, which the faithful 
souls on the barricades knew not — a deadly method. The men were 
drunk, but their commanders were still sober and clear-headed, and 
the troops were being drawn into a circle round that citadel of revo- 
lution ; a belt of iron and fire. 

Deep darkness fell over the city like a pall — the darkness of a 
December night, moonless, starless, the atmosphere thick with rain. 
Every lamp was broken in this quarter of Paris, the gas-pipes were 
cut, not a shop was open except a couple of wine-shops at which the 
insurgents refreshed themselves now and then with a draught of 
water Jiist reddened with thin wine. While the arm of authority 
was maddened with drink, revolt kei^t sober. 

Presently through the darkness and mud and slush a man ap- 
proached the barricade. He was a well-known member of the 
Assembly, a stanch Eepublican. With his tri-colored scarf showing 
even in the darkness, he offered himself to the men on the barricade 
as their captain, the representative of the rights of the people, and 
he was welcomed with a ci^ of “Vive la E^publique ! ” 

Ishmael stood next to him on the barricade, waiting for the attack. 

At half -past ten there came the sound of movement in the direction 
of the markets. The troops were on the move. Then came the 
clamor of voices, the sound of file-firing, then silence, and then 
again the fusillade, the roar of voices and clash of arms. One by 
one the barracades yonder were being taken. 

Between Ishmael’s barricade and the troops there was a double 
barricade in the Eue Mauconseil, a veritable redoubt, poorly but 
bravely manned. Here the fight was brief but desperate. The in- 
surgents liusbanded their ammunition, fired with deliberate aim 
through the crevices of the stone-work, and decimated their foes. 
But tile conflict was only a question of minutes ; the few succumbed 
to the many, and the soldiers, maddened by the loss of their coni- 
rades and the desperate resistance of the foe, leaped upon the barri- 
cade, sabring and shooting right and left of them, trampling the 

corpses under foot. • t i i. 

And now the troops were in front of Ishmael s barricade, the last 
point of resistance, the strongest and best manned. The combat 


104 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


began ; ruthless, devilish on the part of the State ; desperate, de- 
spairing on the part of the Republic. The odds against the Reds 
were overwhelming. Four companies poured from the surrounding 
streets and the vanquished barricades, concentrating their strength 
upon this ultimate struggle. In a serried mass, terrible, invincible, 
they rolled onward like a living flood, and flung themselves against 
the barricade. 

It was horrible. They fought hand to hand, four hundred against 
fifty. They seized each other by the throat, by the hair. Not a 
cartridge was left on the barricade, but there was still the strength 
of despair. A workman, pierced through the body, plucked the 
bayonet from his side and slew a soldier with the bloody point. The 
street w'as hidden in the smoke of the guns. In the thick darkness, 
in the stifling stench of gunpowder, the foes flung themselves against 
each other and fought like demons in the jjit of hell. 

The barricade hardly held tw'O minutes ; the insurgents fell on 
every side. Ishmael, wounded gn the forehead, blinded wuth the 
blood that streamed into his eyes, found himself flung against the 
side of a house at the edge of the banicade. Stunned, dazed for a 
moment or two, he leaned against the brick wall, his head swim- 
ming, his senses leaving him, hearing oaths, groans, gun-shots, 
dimly as in a dream. 

Suddenly something hit him sharply on the head. A loud whis- 
l)or from above said : “ Climb up here — your only chance of es- 
cape.” 

The barricade was taken ; the troops w’ere slaughtering right and 
left ; faint voices of dying men cried “ Vive la Republique ! ” 

“ No prisoners ! ” cried the general in command ; in other words, 
no quarter. 

The thing that had struck Ishmael was the knotted end of a roj^e. 

“ Climb, fool ! ” wiiispered the voice above. 

He slipped his arm through the noose mechanically, and in the 
thick darkness began to scale the wall. He was faint from loss of 
blood ; exhausted by the day’s fighting ; worn out with sleepless 
nights ; but his old boyish habits made the scaling of the w^all an 
easy matter. He climbed from window-ledge to window-ledge, 
wdiile the bullets rained round him, one grazing his leg as he 
mounted. On the second story there was a glimmer of light behind 
a half-closed shutter ; the shutter opened a little wider as he neared 
the point. An arm was stretched out, a hand caught hold of his 
coat, and somehow, giddy, half unconscious, he flung himself 
through the open window, and fell fainting on the floor. 

“ One life gained from the carnage ! ” said a voice about him ; “ I 
have done a better night’s work than if I had been on the barri- 
cade.” 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


105 


% 


CHAPTER XIII. 

“ THE BKEAIiER HAS COME UP BEFORE THEM.” 

When Ishmael came to his right mind, the coup d’etat was an ac- 
complished fact. Prince Louis Napoleon was master of Paris and 
the Parisians ; and, with that central force which explodes or holds 
together the orb of the nation, he was also master of France. The 
storm was over. The state prisoners, crami^ed in their narrow 
cells, fed on black bread and greasy soup ; generals, journalists, 
deputies of all colors and classes, treated with all the ignominy 
which is the common lot of the commonest felons, huddled and 
hustled into prison-vans, and carried off to the Havre station on the 
first stage to Cayenne, and those other generals eating their hearts 
out at Ham — these may have felt the inconveniences and discomforts 
which attend a sudden and dramatic change — a too rapid swinging 
round of the state vessel ; but Paris in general woke with a smile, 
and sunned itself in the balmy atmosj^here of halcyon days, the 
calm which follows the storm. 

Dark and terrible stories have been written of bloody reprisals 
which followed that brief revolt of unarmed patriotism against 
armed power, of the few against thousands — stories written by the 
stainless hand of poet and patriot — stories of wholesale massacres in 
the dead of the night ; of hundreds shot down like sheep ; of gutters 
running blood. Many and many a night the Parisians on the boule- 
vard, dancing, dining, happy and secure in the curtained warmth r 
peaceful homes, heard the roll of the prison vans in the street below . 
but as the newspapers had formally announced that no more felons 
would be sent to the galleys, and that transportation would be 
henceforth the sole punishment for crime, that dismal sound of the 
hea\’y van-wheels thundering over the asphalt made very little im- 
pression. 

“ Another gang of felons going to Cayenne ! ” said Society, with a 
careless shrug. 

One shudders to read these awful histories ; one shrinks from 
looking down into that dark gulf. 

To those who have been happy in Paris under that paternal gov- 
ernment — who have seen the brightness of her peaceful streets, the 
prosperity of her population, her nobly organized charities, her saga- 
cious forethought for the welfare of her obscurest citizens, her foul 
places cleared away, her palaces girdled with parks and gardens, her 
talents encouraged, her greatness of past or present interwoven as an 
ever-living memory in the names of her streets and squares and 
fountains and gateways ; to those who have loved Imperial Paris in 
the davs of their youth, who recall the countenance of her Emperor 
almost as the face of a friend, the loveliness of her Empress as a 
part of the poetry of life — to such as these it is an acute pain to look 
l)ack upon those dark days of December, and to acknowledge that 
behind all the brightness and the beauty, the wisdom, the benevo- 


106 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


c 


lence, the real honest love of mankind, there is this one dark, in- 
effaceable blot. 

One turns shudderingly from the records of men who were eye- 
witnesses of that crime, and one would fain believe that it was not 
his fault. The dark genius of those dreadful days — the Man of De- 
cember — was De Morny, St. Arnaud, Mocquard, Persigny — any one ; 
but not our Emperor. 

It was the evening of the fifth, when Ishmael, who had been de- 
lirious all night and all day, from the effects of a severe sabre 
wound upon his head, emerged from a world of hideous shadows 
and recovei'ed a dim consciousness of realities around him. 

He was lying on a bed in an alcove, an old-fashioned bedstead, 
shaped like a sarcophagus, all rosewood and tarnished gilding, after 
the style of the First Empire. The room was low, but of a tolerable 
size, with two casement windows. Near the stove under the chim- 
ney-piece stood a round table, and on the table a reading lamp. 
The table was covered with a confusion of papers, books, pamphlets, 
all heaped upon one another pell-mell; and an open secretaire 
against the wall was chokeful of the same litter ; manuscripts, books 
in yellow paper covers, books in smart bindings, books in shabby 
bindings, stuffed in anyhow, one on top of the other, sideways, long- 
ways, endways ; a row of pigeon-holes gorged with papers in the 
background. Half buried in a deep bergere beside the table — an 
arm-chair almost as big as a bedstead — lolled a young man, delicate 
of feature, and although not actually handsome, having a certain air 
of elegance, a distinction, and a grace which had more than the 
charm of beauty. His costume was to the last degree Bohemian — 
loose duck trousers, a shabby browm velveteen shooting-coat, a pair 
of red morocco slippers trodden down at the heel, a Byron collar 
and no necktie. He was of about the middle height, slim, fair, with 
light-brown hair and mustache, and large dreamy blue eyes — eyes 
which reminded Ishmael of other eyes, those large piteous blue eyes 
of Paquerette’s, looking at him the day before yesterday with a 
vague piteousness, as of a little child in distress. 

Ishmael looked round the room wonderingly, noting every object, 
until his gaze finally fixed itself on the young man in the arm-chair, 
lolling luxuriously wuth feet as high as his head, lazily puffing a 
German pipe and staring up at the ceiling. 

“ Where am I and how did I come here ? ” faltered Ishmael, after 
l^rolonged scrutiny. He was so weak that it cost him some effort to 
shape these two questions. 

“You came here hanging on to a rope, through one of those win- 
dows,” answered the host, quietly. “You came here from the jaws 
of death ; for hardly half a dozen of the men who fought on that 
last barricade survived the struggle. Three of them were finished 
off by tlie soldiers in the Passage Saumon, shot down like dogs, 
after they had climbed the iron gates for sanctuary. That was un 
}')eu raide. As for your whereabouts, you are on a second floor in 
the Bue Montorgueil, the guest of Hector de Valnois, journalist, 
farce-writer, poet, philosopher, socialist, but not much, metaphysi- 
cian, profound thinker, critic most of all ; and you are welcome to 


AN ISIIMAELITE. i 


107 


remain here till you have a sound skull and can leave the premises 
without fear of the police. I have been expecting a visit from those 
gentlemen at any moment for the last three-and-twenty hours ; but, 
as they have not come yet, I fancy you have given them the slip, 
and that in the pitch darkness of last night nobody saw your won- 
derful ascent at a rope’s end. And now take a pull at this Medoc, 
and when you feel equal to the exertion you can tell me who you 
are.” 

He half -filled a tumbler with wine, and handed it to Ishmael, who 
drank it eagerly, his lips and throat parched with fever. 

“ The barricade was taken ! ” he gasped ; “ yes, I know that. And 
those brave fellows were all slaughtered ; but was that the end ? Is 
the struggle over ? Is there no one more to fight for the right of 
the people — the constitution ? ” 

“The constitution, bah!” exclaimed Valnois, contemptuously; 
“ what is the constitution worth that a man should shed his blood 
for it — or any other abstract noun of the same kind — liberty, equal- 
ity, fraternity, rights of the people ? No, my friend, such things 
were never worth such carnage as this street saw yesterday ; broth- 
ers shedding brothers’ blood. But it is all over. The men of the 
mountain are fugitives or prisoners, Paris has returned to her ac- 
customed tranquillity, the troops have gone back to their barracks, 
and Louis Bonaparte is master of the situation. He has made a 
clean sweep of a particularly unpopular Assembly, and he holds the 
destinies of France in the hollow of his hand. He has restored uni- 
versal suffrage under the fascinating form of the plebiscite, by which 
the people of France are to vote no or yes, whether they will or will 
not have him for their sole and uncontrolled master during the next 
ten years. But as every vote will be recorded, the malcontents had 
better reckon the odds against them before they vote on the wrong 
side. The man who says no may be a marked man in the days to 
come.” 

“ You will not submit to the rule of a usuiqDer — to power snatched 
from an unwilling i)eople at the i)oint of a sword ? ” 

“ My dear fellow, I am one of the vast majority of Frenchmen 
who would as soon serve Peter as Paul. And for the unwillingness 
— why, the struggle of the last two days must have shown you that 
the President’s clutch at the sceptre was not nearly such an unpopu- 
lar move as you handful of Reds think. Paris wants to be governed 
peaceably, and would rather be ruled by one long-headed man with 
a lot of deuced knowing fellows about him than by an assembly of 
conceited idiots all pulling different ways. And now, my good 
friend, I’ll give you a fresh bandage for your head ; and if you feel 
equal to the exertion, you can tell me all about yourself, while I’m 
putting it on. A medical friend of mine was in here this morning 
and got me a lotion for your wound, which he says will heal quickly 
on account of your su])erb physique. It would have been a very 
different matter if any one had cut open my head, he told me. Con- 
stitution feeble, habits dissipated ; that is my renseignenient.” 

“ You are very good,” murmured Ishmael, while Valnois was I’e- 
moving the old bandage and adjusting the new one with fingers as 


108 


AN lailMAELITE. 


light and delicate as those of a woman — you have saved my life — 
saved me from being cut to pieces by those hell-hounds of drunken 
soldiers ; and although I am hardly strong enough to tliank you 
properly, I am not the less grateful. I am a workman, a mason.” 

“ A workman ! Come, that won’t do,” said Valnois. “ You wore 
a blouse by way of disguise ; you were on the side of the blouses, 
and the costume was convenient.” 

“ I have told you the j)lain truth. I have been earning my bread 
in Paris for more than a year. I began as a gacheur, and I am now 
a limosinant, and can earn from thirty to forty francs a week. I 
look forward to the time when I may be able to set up as a master- 
builder in a humble way, perhaps to buy an odd bit of land here and 
there, beyond the exterior boulevards, and to build a few houses for 
men of my own class — houses that shall be a good deal better than 
the dens that most of them herd and hugger-mugger in now.” 

“I see you are ambitious,” said Valnois, throwing away the end 
of his cigar and looking at the face on the pillow with a half-serious, 
half-humorous expression; “and you are saving money — saving 
money from the profits of your own labor. Let me have a good look 
at you, my friend ; let me see what kind of an animal it is which 
works eveiy day in the week and saves a part of every week’s wages. 
I have read of the species in Eugene Sue, but I never quite believed 
in such a type — out of a socialist’s novel.” 

“Why should not a workman have his dreams, as well as a poet ? ” 
asked Ishmael. 

“x\h, why not, indeed! If his dreams reach no better fulfilment 
than the dreams of a poet, heaven help him ! I am a poet, I who 
speak to you, and I have had my dream, which has landed me in the 
gutter. What is your name, friend ? ” 

“ Ishmael.” 

“ Ishmael! tout court. Quel drole de nom ! I see — sobriquet of 
hazard, one of your own choosing. Ishmael ! no surname — only Ish- 
mael ; which makes me all the more certain of what I saw from the 
first, that you are a gentleman and not a workman.” 

“ I am a journeyman mason, as you may find out for yourself any 
day if you take the trouble to inquire about me at Belleville or M6- 
nilmontant. But I am so much your debtor that I should have no 
reserve with you, and I am quite ready to tell you my history, if 
I you care to hear it.” 

“ I am full of curiosity ; I have one of those little minds which 
feed upon trifles, and I am particularly interested in you because 
you represent the one Christian-like act of my existence. I never 
played the good Samaritan before last night.” 

“ And yet the part sits upon you as easily as if it were in your 
very nature, ” said Ishmael ; and then, in briefest, simplest phrases, 
he told his new friend the story of his life from the time of his 
father’s second mamage. Of his mother’s dark fate, or his own 
childish life in Paris, he said not a word. 

“ Upon my sonl, you are about the only wise man of my acquaint- 
ance,” exclaimed Hector de Valnois, who liad listened with unfalter- 
ing attention to every word of Ishmael’s story. “ x\ny other young 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


109 


fellow in your position would have come to Paris with the intention 
of earning his living in gris i)erle gloves ; would have tried first to 
he a poet, then a novelist, then a playwright, then a pamphleteer, 
then a tutor in a day-school, then perhaj^s a drudge at an office where 
they copy plays — deepest sink of poverty and degradation— a place 
where men in ragged coats and innocent of linen herd in some foul 
den like dogs in a kennel, in the hope that by being on the i)remises 
day and night, they may get the first chance of any work that has 
to be done against time for one of the theatres. For the man who 
wants to wear kid gloves and lounge on the boulevard, and who 
thinks he can earn his bread en passant, there is a gradual, inevitable 
downhill road, every stage of which I have trodden. Yes, my 
friend. I have sounded the bottom of this gulf of Paris ; but happily 
I had elasticity enough to surge up again on the wave of fortune. 
Heaven knows how long I may remain on the breast of the waters. 
There are men who, when once they sink, never rise again ; men 
who one day leave off wearing linen and trying to live honestly, and 
who from that hour gravitate toward the galleys or New Caledonia.” 

“ Perhaps if I had had a little more book-learning I might have 
tried to earn my bread in a manner more becoming my race,” 
answered Ishmael ; ‘ ‘ but as I was much cleverer with my hands than 
with my head, I made up my mind that my hands would have to 
keep me, and so far they have earned enough for my wants.” 

“And enough for you to save money; wonderful man!” said 
Yalnois, lazily puffing at his cigarette, and smiling with a sui)erior 
air upon his new friend. 

He wondered at the force of character, the dogged perseverance, 
the temperance and pmdence of a man who could work six days a 
week at a laborious trade and put by half his earnings. 

Y^et it seemed to him a lower order of intellect, an inferior kind of 
clay which could do these things. Poets, wits, geniuses, are made 
in a different mould. For them these sordid details, these petty daily 
sacrifices, are impossible. 

“ Wliat should I do with six francs a day?” asked Ishmael sim- 
l^ly. “ I care very little what I eat, and so far I have been able to 
live without drinking, as many of my fellow-workmen drink. My 
lodging costs me less than a franc a day. I used to give more than 
that for a dirty garni, but now I have my own furniture and a clean, 
airy room for five francs a week. I can live upon a franc and a half 
a day and the rest is left for books, clothes, and a trifle every week 
to put in the savings bank.” 

“Miraculous! And I got fifteen hundred francs six weeks ago 
for mv share in a vaudeville at the Palais Eoyal. Comment on fait 
la noce. And I have only one louis and a handful of silver left this 
evening.” 

Ishmael stayed three days and nights in the Eue Montorgueil, long 
enough to make him veiy'intimate with a young man of Hector de 
Yalnois’ frank, easy temper. De Yalnois liad that half-boyish, half 
petit-maitre vanity which is prouder of small vices than other men 
are of great virtues. He was the true type of Parisian flaneur ; 
dandy, Bohemian, very indifferent as to the company he kept, but 


no 


AN ISTBIAELITE. 


very iDarticiilar as to the cut of his coat, the color and quality of his 
gloves. He could go without a dinner, he could sink now and again 
to the obscurity of a cheap restaurant on the left bank of the Seine ; 
but at Philii^pe’s or the Maison-Doree, Vefours or the Trois Freres, 
there was no guest more critical or more imperious. His habits 
were desultory. He worked while other men slept, and slept while 
all the world was at work. He abandoned himself to long intervals 
of absolute idleness, which he called his period of incubation. And 
then, when the purse was empty and hunger — absolute, uncomi3ro- 
mising hunger began to pinch the poet’s inside, he would take out a 
quire of paper and write for twenty hours at a stretch, like a maniac, 
producing something which varied extraordinarily in quality and 
style — a one -act farce, an article for the “ Revue de Deux Mondes,” 
a feuilleton for the “Figaro,” criticisms, verse, sentiment, satire — 
but something which was generally worth money, and which he im- 
mediately exchanged for that prime necessity of life. Of course 
publishers and managers profited by his folly, and paid him less 
than they would have paid a wiser man. 

Valnois knew this, but accepted the fact as an inevitable conse- 
quence of taking life pleasantly. His life, such as it was, suited his 
temperament better than a better life could have done. He had 
youth, gayety, good looks, a crowd of friends in the present. He 
was the only son of a man of noble family and diminished means, 
and was heir to a much impoverished estate in the vicinity of Nimes, 
which seemed to him like an assured fortune in the future. 

Before he had spent a third night in the Rue Montorgueil Ishmael 
found out that Valnois had given him his own and only bed, and 
had been content to spend the night in an easy-chair. The sacri- 
fice the hardy mason refused to permit any longer ; and on the third 
*and fourth nights of his visit he slept rolled in a blanket and 
stretched in front of the fireplace. 

On the fifth morning his head was sound enough to dispense with 
the disfiguring and suspicious bandage ; and the giddiness caused by 
his wound had passed away. He left the Rue Montorgueil before 
seven o’clock in the cold gray morning, after thanking de Valnois 
heartily for his hospitality. 

“Come and see me any afternoon that you can spare an hour,” 
said Valnois. “I am generally out after dusk, but till dusk the 
chances are that you will find me in my den. I like - starshine and 
the blue night sky better than the cold glare of day. I like my Paris 
when all her shabbiness and dilapidations are hidden, and she has 
the air of a fairy city, a place of lamplight and mirth, music and 
movement.” 

“You will not care to see me again,” murmured Ishmael, shyly; 
“I wear a blouse, and work among other blouses.” 

“I admire your blouse and I respect you. Come as often as you 
like, you will never find me ashamed of your blouse. If I have any 
political creed at all, my color is distinctly red. I admire the work*^- 
ingman and the aristocrat ; the first, the horny-handed toiler, with- 
out whom society must cease to exist and civilization stop like a 
watch with a broken mainspring; the second, the fine flower of 


AN milMAELITE. 


Ill 


fashion and high birth. It is your middle class— yonr epicier — your 
Philistine, that I detest,” 

On this they parted, firm friends ; albeit Ishmael, the son of toil, 
felt a kind of shyness in his association with the brain-worker. The 
man whose varied collection of books in three or four languages, in- 
dicated a degree of literary culture which was a new thing to Count 
Caradec’s sou. To know a little Latin and less Greek was the 
count’s idea of a gentleman’s education, and he had reproached his 
son for not ha\'ing properly mastered his rudiments. But here was 
a youth living on a second floor in an obscure street who was steeped 
in Gerilian philosophy and xDoetry, who could read Cervantes and 
Lope de Vega in the original, and had the gems of the Divine Com- 
edy on the tip of his tongue. Was it not an honor and a privilege 
for the limosinant of Belleville to call such a man his friend ? 

Ishmael looked about him wonderingly in the gray of the early 
winter morning as he made his w’ay across the markets and along 
the Rue St. Antoine. He had expected to see traces of violence and 
slaughter upon every side ; but the broken lamps and shattered 
windows of the Rue Montorgueil alone told of the brief, sharp 
struggle four days ago. Paris had her old air of brisk movement — 
the grisettes and workmen trudging to their workshoi)s, their laun- 
dries^ — the clerks huriying to their offices, the heavy wagons iTim- 
bling by to the markets ; and all the atmosiDhere in these narrow 
streets by St. Eustache laden with odors of garden-stuff and char- 
cuterie, sea fish and river fish, butchers’ meat and poultry. 

Ishmael had taken the direction of the Place de la Bastille, with 
the idea of looking in for a minute or so at that dingy ground-floor den 
in the Rue Sombreuil, just to see how it had fared vuth Puquerette 
and her people on the terrible night of the 4th. He knew not how 
quiet the Faubourg St. Antoine had been, while the heart of Paris 
was throbbing so stormily, beating itself to death yonder by the 
grand old church of St. Eustache. It seemed to him that St. An- 
toine, renowned of old, could hardly have preserved a sluggish neu- 
trality till the very end. The sleeping lion must have been aroused 
from "his dull lethargy by the noise of that massacre on the boule- 
vard. 

He found a little crowd hanging about the archway leading into 
the quadrangular yard — a little crowd of outcast boys and women of 
the ragpicker species from the Rue St. Marguerite, two or three 
grisettes, a fat man in a white apron from a pork-butcher’s shop 
round the corner ; and on inquiring the cause of this unusual excite- 
ment he was told that there was a funeral coming out presently— 
the old pochard of the ground-floor had gone to his account. Pere 
Lemoine, the trolleur, w’as to be buried that morning. 

“PereLemoine dead!” exclaimed Ishmael. “Then there was 
more fighting here on the fourth, I suppose— more bamcades ? ” 

“Pas si bgte,” said the pork-butcher; “ we are all for the Prince 
Ijouis Napoleon— a clever man, who will make trade good in Pans, 
and who ought to be Emperor. What do we want with barricades ? 
] 're Lemoine went further afield to get his number. He was among 
those curious folks who insisted upon being out on the boulevards, 


112 


AI^ ISIIMAELITE. 


although they were warned by the President’s i^lacards that wise 
l^eople were to keep safe and snug within doors. And now he is 
going to eat dandelions by the roots, in the cemetery yonder.” 

“ But there were those who stayed at home and were shot in their 
own houses,” grumbled one of the old women. “ The soldiers fired 
in at the windows, little children were killed in their mothers’ arms. 
There was never such a thing in Paris before.” 

Ishmael passed in among the crowd, and went across the yard to 
Pere Lemoine's lodgings. The hearse was standing before the door, 
the shabby little carriage in which the trolleur was to take his last 
ride to the i^lace of pauper graves in the great graveyard at the end 
of the Eue de la Koquette, just beyond the jail and the scaffold — 
the prison-house of the dead hard by the prison-house of the living. 
The undertaker and his two men were in the darksome bed-chamber 
at the back, nailing down the coffin ; while Mere Lemoine and I’aque- 
rette, dressed in shabbiest black — second or perhaps third-hand 
mourning, bought from the merchant of frippery in the Temple — 
sat on each side of the door, waiting to take their places in the jn'o- 
cession ; the old woman weeping audibly, and with red, swollen eye- 
lids and drawn-down lips ; Paquerette pale as the dead, but with 
dry eyes. 

There was a bottle of bright yellow fluid and half a dozen glasses, 
with a dish of biscuits on the table, by which the Auvergnat vas 
standing, with a glass in his hand, ready to offer hospitality to any 
neighbor who came in. He and the two women were to be the only 
followers of that sable carriage yonder. He had brought a wreath 
of yellow immortelles to lay on his old employer’s coffin. 

Ishmael shook hands with Mere Lemoine and murmured a few 
kind words, whereupon the fountain of tears flowed still faster, and 
in a voice broken by whimpers the old woman told him how she and 
Paquerette had sat up all night on the fourth waiting for the jiatron 
to come home, and how, when they heard next morning of the fusi- 
lade on the boulevard, their first thought had been to go all over 
that part of Paris hunting for the missing P^re — to go even to the 
Elysce itself, if need were, to demand his blood of the president, 
or to St. Arnaud to ask what the soldiers had done with an honest 
man who had never harmed any one in his life. And then the 
charabia had suggested that he should first go to the Morgue and 
see if by evil fate this poor soul was lying on the cold stones there, 
under the little fountain of icy water, unclaimed, unknown ; and he 
had gone, and he had found his old friend, with a dreadful wound 
upon his jaw and shot through the lungs, and he had brought him 
home ; and it was he who was to pay for the black feathers and 
velvet pall, for Paquerette’s sake. 

The charabia nodded assent with a friendly air and offered Ish- 
macl a glass of brandy, which was refused. Paquerette said not a 
word. She had hardly lifted up her eyes since Ishmael entered. 
She sat looking down at the skirt of her rusty black gown — pallid, 
motionless, expressionless, like a creature without thought or feel- 
ing. 

“ Do you know how he came by his death? ” asked Ishmael. 


I AN I8HMAELITE. 113 

^ “Only that ho was among those who were picked np on the 

boulevard after the fusilade,” answered the old woman. “Some 
? say that shots were fired at the soldiers from the roof of the house, 
and that they were maddened by the idea that they were all going 
to be shot down by the people, and that they turned upon the crowd 
' and fired, without orders from any oificer in command.” 

“They were drunk,” said the charabia ; “they were all drunk. 
They shot and killed for pure sport — women, old men, children — 
aiming at them as if they had been sparrows, betting on their shots 
as in a billiard-room. It was fine sport ; and this time it was chiefly 
; the bourgeois, the folks who wear broadcloth and fine linen who 
suffered. It was a grim spectacle to see the well-dressed corpses 
lying in the gutters. Pere Lemoine had no business there. I am 
sorry for him.” 

“ Shall I walk to the cemetery with you ? ” asked Ishmael — an 
U offer which was promptly accepted by Madame Lemoine. That 

I W’ould make them four instead of three, and the charabia could walk 

I with Paquerette, which w’as only right. And now the coffin was 

H brought out and placed upon the bier, and covered with the rusty 

I velvet pall ; and the funeral train of four followed the hearse out of 

I the muddy yard into the muddier street. 

fl Ishmael, having offered his company out of pui'e kindness, was 

i content to walk beside Mffi’e Lemoine, albeit she dragged her slippers 

I] along the muddy ground, and was obviously illuminated. She ex- 

a patiated on the merits of the deceased ; deprecated, while admitting 

a his faults ; praised her own goodness and fidelity as wife and house- 

hold manager — all with tears which flowed so freely from her in- 
■ flamed eyelids and adown her sodden cheeks that it might have 
been thought that the trois-six she had been imbibing freely for the 
last four days found an outlet in this form. v 

Islimael bought a votive wreath with E. I. P. in black upon yellow 
on the way to the cemetery, and laid it reverently upon the vaga- 
bond’s coffin before it went down into the tranchee gratuite, a recent 
I improvement upon the common grave; for in those long trendies 
the coffins were no longer heaped one on the top of the other, but 
ranged decently in a row twenty centimetres asunder. Here until 
five years after the last coffin had been laid in the trench the pauper’ 
slumbers undisturbed, as safe as the rich man in his freehold, and 
the cross which marks his last resting place is no longer a mockery 
and a fiction, as it was in days of common graves. 

The funeral service of the poor is not a protracted office. Pere 
Lemoine was laid in the earth in less than twenty minutes, and it 
was only ten o’clock when Ishmael bade Paquerette and her grand- 
mother good-by at the gate of Pere Lachaise. 

“‘When is the wedding to be?” he asked, as he shook hands with 
the old woman. 

“In a fortnight ; the sooner the better. Who is there to take 
care of her now, poor child, since the good old grandfather is lying 
underground ? ” 

8 


lU 


AN milMAELITE. 


CHAPTEE XIV. 

SHE IS MOEE PEECIOUS THAN EUBIES. 

Islimael walked slowly toward Menilmontant after leaving tlie 
gate of the cemetery, his mind full of Paquerette and her destiny. 
He had given more than one furtive glance at the charabia during the 
funeral service, and he had not been favorably impressed by the man’s 
appearance, considering his character of bridegroom expectant. The 
fellow was honest enough, perhaps ; but the heavy brow, the small, 
dull eyes, under bushy, projecting brows, indicated a nature of the 
lowest order — loutish, sullen, tending almost to the savage. And by 
the side of this short, thick-set figure, this heaw^^ bulldog visage, 
Paquerette’s slender form and pale, small face looked more than ever 
like some white wild flower, which too rough a gust of March wind 
would snap from its frail stem. There was something revolting to 
human nature in the idea of a union between tw’o beings soMifterent 
— almost as revolting as the idea of union between creatures of dis- 
similar species — wolf and lamb, vulture and dove. 

And yet the thing was to be, and it W’as no affair of Ishmael’s. 
Better, it would seem, that Paquerette should have such a husband as 
this brutal Auvergnat, if he could provide her with a comfortable 
home, than she should languish in that den in the Eue Sombreuil 
at the mercy of a drunken grandmother. 

‘ ‘ Let me think of my own business, ” said Ishmael, setting his 
face toward the yard of the master-builder, his bourgeois, his jDatron, 
anxious to see if the coup d’etat would make any difterence in his 
chances of 'emifioyment. 

The bourgeois was on the premises, and in excellent spirits. Noth- 
ing succeeds like success ; and that bold stroke of the other day had 
made Napoleonic rule already an established fact. The builder w’as 
Bonapartist to the tips of his nails. He talked as if these days of 
December were the beginning of a millennium for all France in 
general, for the "building trade in particular. 

There was i3lenty of work for Ishmael, and an advancement in 
his position, wdiich he had not expected. The foreman of the works, 
finding things throwm out of gear by the agitations of the third and 
fourth, had consoled himself at the wine-shops of his quarter, the 
assommoirs, or spirit-shops, which dealt in liquid fire, bright to the 
eye, pleasant to the jaded palate, devilish in its effect upon body and 
brain. Three days sustained upon this kind of nourishment had re- 
sulted in an attack of delirium tremens. The foreman was at the 
Hospital of St. Anne ; and the master had sworn a deadly oath that 
a man who could so abandon his duty at the time when there was a 
heavy contract on hand should never again touch a sou of his 
money. 

Ishmael said a good word for the foreman, wdio had always treated 
him like a brute, but who had an honest, industrious little wife and 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


115 


a brace of pretty children. The patron was inflexible ; and Ishmael 
found himself promoted to the post of overseer of the other men. 

Happily, he was a favorite with them all ; and as the late foreman 
had been detested, his appointment gave universal satisfaction. His 
I advancement to be foreman of the works doubled his pay. He felt 
himself on the road to high fortune. 

It was in the week that followed the coup d’etat, while every one 
was talking of the plebiscite, the probability of a second empire, and 
the dark rumors of ■ a good deal of unpleasantness as it were below 
the surface, in the shape of transportation and exile, that Ishmael 
was surprised by a rencontre with an old acquaintance. 

He had not forgotten his mother’s maid Lisette, even in the ex- 
citement of his new life in Paris. He had taken a good deal of 
trouble in hunting for her, visiting almost every charcutier’s shop 
in the outskirts of the city, but without success. He did not know 
the name of the man she had married ; and among the ladies who 
devoted themselves to dealings in the varieties of pig-meat, he 
could hear of no one at all resembling the friend of his desolate 
childhood. 

It happened, however, about a week after the fatal fourth of 
DecembCT, that Ishmael, being indisposed for his customary studi- 
ous evening, went further afield than usual for his dinner, and 
patronized a tapis franc in the region of Montmartre, and within 
two or three hundred yards of the theatre at which his mother and 
his mother’s maid had been performers thirteen years before. 

When he had dined he went to look at the building which had 
been a mystery to him in his childhood. He had seen it six months 
^ ago, out of repair, closely shut, the spurious Grecian facade plastered 
I with bills of all kinds. To-night the composite pillars, the stuccoed 
portico were bright with new paint and cheap gilding, and a row of 
colored lamps shone in front of the entrance. Above the cornice of 
: the portico, in characters of flame, appeared the new name of the 

I building, “ Palais de Cristal,” so called after Sir Joseph Paxton’s 
jt famous palace of industry in Hyde Park, an idea which had vividly 
impressed the Gallic mind. The old Escurial Theatre had* been im- 
I proved off the face of the earth, and the Palais de Cristal, a new 

i cafe chantant, entrance ten sous, consommation libre, had arisen in 

I its place. 

I Ishmael paid his ten sous to a smartly-dressed matron, who occu- 
i pied a counter near the entrance, and went into the auditorium. It 
was a long room, something like a chapel, with rows of rush-bot- 
tomed chairs and little tables, placed at inteiwals, on each side of a 
I central alley. At the end, where the altar would have been in a 
!• church, there was a platform, lighted with colored lamps, and beau- 
tified l)y artificial roses and lilies in gilded vases. ^ A grand piano 

' occupied the centre of the platform, and on each side of the piano 

n there were three or four arm-chairs, covered with crimson velvet, 
f for the performers. The platform was empty, and the body of the 
i hall was but thinly occupied when Ishmael took his seat, very near 
the footlights. He had to wait some time before the performance 
' began during which period the 51ite of the neighborhood were 



116 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


dropping in, making a great noise with their boots, and a greater 
noise with their tongues, ordering divers refreshments of the woman 
at the counter, or of the waiters in the hall, disputing, laughing, 
squabbling about seats, rights and counter-rights. Ishmael began 
to think he was in a fair way to waste his evening ; yet he had a 
fancy to see what kind of a place this was in which his mother’s 
beauty had once shone as a star. He heard a woman telling a friend 
that the platform yonder, with its lamps and flowers and muslin cur- 
tains, was only the old stage upon which she had seen “ Cartouche ” 
and the “ Tour de Nesle ” acted five years ago. 

Aud now a resplendent person in evening dress, with a white 
waistcoat and shining boots, entered from a curtained doorway, took 
his i:)lace at the piano, and began to jDlay Partant p)Our la Syrie as a 
triumphal march, to which entered four other resi^lendent person- 
ages of the male sex, conducting four ladies in gorgeous raiment, 
who, with the air of duchesses, sunk languidly into crimson fauteuils 
and smiled their gracious acknowledgment of the noisy greeting of 
the audience, all tired of waiting, and ready to chink their teas230ons 
or wine-glasses rajj'ui’ously at the smallest jwo vocation. 

Ishmael scrutinized the 2 :)ainted faces, the sleek shining hair, with 
the eye of a hawk. Not one of those radiant creatures would ever 
again see her thirtieth birthday. More than one was decidedly on 
the wane ; but painted eyelashes, rouge and accroche-coeur curls are 
almost as good as the beaute du diable. At sight of one of those 
artistic countenances, round 2 )lumi^ cheeks, a low forehead ^hastered 
with little rings of black hair, 2 :>lumi:> shoulders and whitened arms, 
in a glistening green silk gown, the skirt an ascending scale of 
scalloped flounces, Ishmael gave a start which almost capsized his 
next neighbor’s chojij^e of Bavarian beer. One glance told him that 
the lady in green was his old friend Lisette, her beauty ami^lified, 
coarsened, 2 )erha 2 :>s, by the i^assage of yeai’s, but just the same kind 
Oi Lisette he had known thirteen years ago. He wanted to go to the 
platform that moment and shake hands with her across the lamps 
and flowQrs, but he restrained himself, and sat waiting and watching. 

There was a variety of music which argued a catholic taste on the 
part of the audience. There was a sentimental duet about the stars 
and the sea, relieved immediately after by a comic duet about a 
matrimonial quarrel, and then came a hunting song, aud then the 
quartette from “ Rigoletto,” sung with tremendous force on the 
l)art of the soprano, until the gas globes rattled and the hall mng 
again. And when the apj^lause after this great work had subsided, 
Lisette, who had been silent hitherto, came sim]:)ering to the foot- 
lights. 

There was a storm of applause directly she came forward— cheers, 
familiar little cries and greetings, as at the appearance of an old es- 
tablished favorite, who has taken root in the very hearts of her 
audience. She smiled round at her admirers, she courtesied, laughed, 
cleared her Ihroat with a coquettish little cough, adjusted her gilt 
bracelets, and then, still broadly smiling, with reddened lips she 
executed a masteiqiiece of the comic muse, as extant in Paris at the 
close of 1851. 


AN ISUMAELITE. 


117 


When the entertainment was over, Ishmael tore a leaf out of his 
poeket-hook and wrote upon it : “ Will Madame Ladronette ” (that 
was Lisette’s stage name) “ speak to an old friend from Brittany 
presently at the artists’ door ? ” This bnef missive he intrusted to 
one of the waiters, and then he went out into the street and found 
his ^yay to an obscure little door in an alleyway at the side of the 
Palais de Cristal. 

Here Ishmael found another person in attendance ; a short, stout 
man with a white apron tucked aside under a pilot coat. 

“ Ai’e you waiting for one of the artists, monsieur ? ” this person 
asked after two or three minutes, with a somewhat suspicious air. 

“ I am waiting for Madame Ladronette.” 

“ Indeed ! ” said the stout man with a start and a snort ; “ and 
may I ask what business you may have between eleven o’clock and 
midnight with an honorable lady like Madame Ladronette ? ” 

“You can ask, assuredly, when you have told me by what right 
you exi^ect to be answered.” 

‘ ‘ By my right as Madame Ladronette’s husband, sir ; I think that 
ought to be enough,” retorted the other fiercely. 

“ Oh, then you are the charcutier,” exclaimed Ishmael, laughing. 

“ Yes, sir, I am the charcutier ; I hope you do not consider that a 
dishonorable trade ? ” 

“Sir, it is at once respectable and useful,” answered Ishmael 
gravely ; “and as you have established your right to know my busi- 
ness with Lisette — Madame Ladronette, I should say — I am pleased 
to tell you that, although you see me to-night a great hulking fellow 
of over six feet high, I was once small, friendless, helpless, unhappy, 
and that in those days your wife was very kind to me.” 

“She has a heart large enough to be kind to the universe,” said 
the charcutier, who was a j^onij^ous little man, and had an air of 
swelling as he spoke, as if literally puffed ui) iDy his own conceit. 
“ But hero she comes to answer for herself.” 

Lisette emerged from the greasy little swing door, neatly and even 
fashionably clad in a large cashmere shawl, which reached almost 
to her heels, a black velvet bonnet, and a thick lace veil. She went 
up to Ishmael, who was standing in the light of the lamp over the 
door and looked at him intently for a few moments, and then she 
said : 

“It is Count Caradec’s face, only handsomer ! Surely you are 
not ” 

‘ ‘ I was once Sebastian Caradec, the little boy you used to take out 
walking in Paris years ago ; but I have done with the old name and 
the old history, and I am now Ishmael, foreman of the works at the 
Bose Yard, Belleville.” 

“Sebastian — that poor little creature!” she repeated, hardly 
comprehending the latter part of his speech. “ Such a tall, dark fel- 
low, until a black mustache, and the shoulders of a grenadier. Why, 
I must be getting an old woman. Figure to yourself then, Alphonse, 
tliis young man is the same I have told you about— whose mother — 
old songs, all that — and T was almost as fond of him as if he had 
been niy own flesh and blood ; and after his mother’s death his 


118 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


father took him back to Brittany. But how comes it that yoii are 
in Paris, Sebastian, and wearing a blouse ? ” 

“ Because I was not wanted at Pen-Hoel. My father has a wife 
and other sons. I was one too many. There was no place for me 
beside the hearth. So I cut the knot of the difficulty-^an unloved 
son is a difficulty, you see — by coming to Paris, where I can earn 
my own living, and am in nobody’s way.” 

“It was bravely done,” said Lisette. “You have your poor 
mother’s independent siDirit.” 

And then, at the invitation of the charcutier, whose name was 
Alphonse Moque, Ishmael went home to supper with his old friend 
and her husband. They lived within two or three streets of the 
Palais de Cristal, in an old house in an old street, one of the little 
bits of old village architecture to be found here and there on the 
skirts of Paris. But though the shop and the rooms above it were 
low and small, they were smartly furnished and neatly kept. Mine. 
Moque was very proud of her home, and was of an industrious turn, 
now that she had a stake in the country. She served in the shop, 
she looked after the housekeeping, and at night she sung comic 
songs to a rapturous audience. Alphonse was proud of having 
secured such a versatile wife. 

Ishmael sat late over the little supper-table in the warm snug sit- 
ting-room, with its new mahogany furniture and bright yellow dam- 
ask curtains, clock and candelabra in alabaster and gold — all paid 
for out of Lisette’s salaiy, as M. Moque iiroudly stated. It was not 
that the charcutier did not earn money by his business; but the 
profits of the pork shop were of too serious a character to be frit- 
tered away upon furniture or fine clothes. Moque’s superfluous cash 
went to the public funds to make a provision for old age ; but Li- 
sette did what she liked with her professional earnings. 

“ It was a Ijargain between us,” said Alphonse, gazing at his wife 
with fatuous admiration. “I did not desire to be richer by my 
union with one of the most famous women in Paris. I only sought 
the honor of being allied to her, the glory of being able to tell the 
world that she is mine. If you knew how that stage door is some- 
times besieged of a night by men who come from the fashionable 
quarters of Paris — ah, from the ElysSe itself — you would not won- 
der that I was uncivil to you,” added Alphonse, excusing himself to 
Islimael. 

It was his dearest delusion that his wife’s footsteps were haunted 
by the fine flower of Parisian dissipation. He had an idea that the 
prince-president himself had made particular inquiries about her, 
had suggested that she should be engaged at one of tlie boulevard 
theatres. But the inexorable malevolence of rival artists had ijre- 
vented the gratification of that august desire. 

Lisette smiled modestly and murmured deprecatory little remarks 
now and then, reminding her husband that she was not so young as 
she had once been, that even beauty will fade, and so forth. But 
she api)earcd, on the whole, to believe in those shadowy rakes from 
the Boulevard des CaiDucines, who were supjDosed to haunt the stage 
door, but whom mortal man had never yet encountered. 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


119 


Ishmael went back to liis lodging in the early moraing, pleased at 
having found a friend of the pas., albeit that friend was associated 
with the darkest hours of his life. There had not been much bright- 
ness in his life hitherto ; but it seemed to him that a brighter day 
was now dawning, the beginning of a substantial success. His mind 
was full of plans, ideas, improvements, inventions ; and, if there 
were indeed a time of gigantic enterprise at hand, he felt that for 
men of his stamp there must be plenty of work, and, with the work, 
golden opportunities. 

Strong in his confidence in his own power, and buoyed up by hope, 
Ishmael’s days and nights knew no weariness. He lived less in the 
present than in the future ; every blow of hammer or mallet, every 
hour of toil, seemed to him a stage on the journey of his life, and 
whether the stage carried him an inch or a mile, it was enough for 
him to know that he was always moving forward, that eveiy day of 
labor was a day of progress. 


CHAPTEE XV. 

“as A ROE FROM THE HAND OF THE HUNTER.” 

Eighteen fifty-one was dead and gone, its bloody close a thing of 
the past — an old song —forgotten by almost everybody except a few 
liuiidred prisoners at Bicetre, or Ham, or Cayenne. The world of 
Pads troubled its linnet’s head but little about that obscure minority 
in durance or exile. The new year began with pomp and splendor, 
floudsh of tmmpets, roll of organs, clank of helmet and sword, a 
grand Te Deum at the cathedral of Notre-Dame. The great bell, 
whose clapper sounds but on occasions of monster import, pealed 
with deep and solemn voice over the housetops of the city ; and in 
that mighty fane, gorgeous with velvet and brocade, gold and jewels, 
resplendent with myriad tapers, lamp-lit altars, Paris thronged to 
see the Dictator enthroned upon a dais, while the hierarchy of 
France invoked heaven’s blessing upon his lofty mission as elected 
ruler of the French people, the chosen of seven millions and a half 
of voters. 

Once more the Imperial Eagle, symbol of Eoman prowess, Eoman 
i:)ride, spread his broad pinion over Paris. The Eepublican catch- 
words, Liberty, E;iuality, and Fraternity were effaced from the pub- 
lic buildings and the prince-president left the Elysee to take up his 
residence at the Tuileries. 

The new year was only a week old when an event happened which 
threw the whole scheme of Ishmael’s life out of gear, one of those 
few events in a man’s life which are fatal. 

He had sat up late overnight studying a famous work on the con- 
struction of bridges lent him by his master. The subject was full 
of mathematical difficulties, and as Ishmael was for the most part a 
self-taught mathematician, having learnt only the elements of the 
science from good Father Bressant, he had found the treatise on 


120 


AN miMAELITE. 


bridges stiff work, and had toiled deep into the night without mak- 
ing any great progress. 

His sense of bmng baffled by the difficulties of the subject so oj^- 
pressed him that when he lay down, in the hope of getting three or 
four hours rest before the working day began, he found himself un- 
able to sleep for more than ten minutes at a stretch. His brain was 
fevered by the work he had been doing, and over and above his vexa- 
tion at non-success, he had a strange, vague sense of trouble that 
w'eighed him down. Every now and then he turned restlessly on 
his liard pallet, or started up from his pillow as if there had been a 
scorpion lurking under it. 

He tried to reason with himself, to calm dowm nerves and brain. 
He told himself that the difficulties which had baffled him to-night 
w’ould be subjugated by persistence and labor ; and yet, and yet, the 
sense of Avorry, the feeling of oppression, were not to be overcome — 
grew stronger rather — as the darkness wore on toward dawn. 

At last, in a moment of vexation, he gave up the vain effort to 
sleep, and rose and dressed by candle-light. It was half-past five 
o’clock, and quite dark ; but Ishmael thought that a w^alk country- 
w^ard, even in the darkness, would tranquillize his nerves, and make 
him fitter for the. labor of the coming day. When he tried to open 
his door he encountered an obstacle outside which prevented the 
door from opening more than half-way. A very human groan, 
breathed in the darkness, told him that this obstacle was a human 
form. 

“ Who is there ? ” he asked, startled. 

“It is I — Paquerette.” 

“ Paquerette ? ” 

He went back and relit his candle hastily, and then went out upon 
the landing. 

Yes, it was Paquerette. She was sitting on the floor, in the angle 
betw^een the door and the wall, her head leaning against the plaster. 
Her face w^as deadly pale, and her forehead was daubed with blood. 

“Paquerette, in heaven’s name what has happened to you?” 
asked Ishmael, putting down the candle hastily inside his room, and 
then stooping to lift up Paquerette in his strong arms. 

“ You are hurt ! Who hurt you ? — where ?--why ? ” 

He gasped these questions breathlessly, while he carried her into 
his room and placed her in his armchair. 

“ You are shivering,” he said, “ I’ll light my stove and make you 
some coffee. But how did you come here, iDOor child ! Tell me — • 
tell me everything.” 

“ I came late last night, after every one was gone to bed.” 

“ And you have been sitting there, on that cold landing, all night ? ” 

“ Yes. It seemed a very long time. But I did not want to dis- 
turb you ; and I knew that you would come out in the morning, and 
that you would be kind to me. You Tvere always so kind to me,” 
she said, looking up at him with plaintive blue eyes, innoceutlv, 
with unconscious love. “ I have the basket that you gave me, and 
the flowers and berries I picked that day. The charabia was angiy 
about them once and wanted me to burn them, but I would as soon 


AN I8HMAELITE. 


121 


have thrown myself into the fire. The basket is outside. Please 
Ijick it np for me, Monsieur Ishmael.” 

He obeyed, full of wonder, full of pity. He brought the basket 
from the landing, and put it on the table beside Paquerette, among 
his books and papers of last night. And then he knelt down and 
lighted the stove and filled the coffee-pot, which was all ready for 
his morning meal. He had acquired all the handy ways of a bach- 
elor mechanic since his coming to Paris, and his "preparations for 
breakfast w^ere dexterously and rapidly made in the dim light of the 
single candle. He glanced at Paquerette now and then, but he asked 
her no further questions. He could see that she was exhausted by 
some great agitation, by a night of cold and suffering ; and he was 
content to wait until her strength should revive. 

When the coffee w^as ready he coaxed her to take a cupful, wait- 
ing upon her, soothing her with w'omanly tenderness and patience. 
He felt as if she had been a wounded bird that had flowui in at his 
window for shelter — a weakling that he could cherish and comfort 
in his bosom. He had no sense as yet of the incongruity of their 
irosition — no consciousness of the hand of fate, albeit that ominous 
feeling of trouble, that vague oppression of fatality had been w'eigh- 
ing him dowm all night. 

At last, when she had taken the coffee, and the fire had warmed 
her, she began to talk, a little incoherently, childishly, even ; but 
Ishmael was patient with her, and let her tell her pitiful story in her 
own w'ay. 

“ I dare say it was very wrong to come to you,” she faltered ; “I 
had no right, no claim ; but you were always kind, and where else 
could I go ? I dare not go to the Benoits, for if they had hidden 
me ever so, grandmother would have found me in their apartment, 
and she would have ill-treated them for sheltering me. You are a 
strong man ; she cannot beat you, or abuse you.” 

“ You ^vere quite right to come to me if you were in trouble,” 
said Ishmael, kindly. 

He was kneeling by the stove, looking up at her as she talked, the 
candle-light shining upon her blood-stained forehead and sorrowful 
eyes. 

" “I hated him always, hated him from the very first. Did not I 
tell you that I hated him, that night when we were going home 
from Vincennes ? ” 

“The charabia? Yes, I remember perfectly. That made me 
think it very strange you should be willing to marry him.” 

“ I was not willing, I never left off hating him. When he touched 
my hand I felt as if I wanted to run away to the end of the earth. 
One evening he kissed me, and I was awake all night, shuddering 
at the loathsomeness of that kiss. But they told me I w^as to marry 
him, and that I was very lucky to have such an offer of marriage. 
It would 1)6 a blessing for all of us, grandfather said — for them and 
foj’ me— for the charabia had saved a little fortune, and would make 
a home for us all. We were all to live with him in the rooms be- 
hind his shop ; grandmother was to do the housework, and I was to 
live like a lady ! ” 


122 


AN miMAELITE. 


‘ ‘ And on this yon thought better of him ? ” speculated Ishmael. 

“No, no, no ! I refused with all my might. I told them I would 
rather be lying in my grave than married to that hateful man ; and 
then they scolded me, and told me what my mother had been ; oh, 
is it not cruel to talk of the dead like that — the poor helpless dead 

^vho cannot rise up and answer ? And grandfather told me that I 

must marry the charabia; I had no chance ; it was his wish, and I 
was bound by the law to obey him. He had brought me up, aud 
clothed me, and fed me, and I was his property, to do what he 
liked with. It was his will that I should be the charabia’s wife. 
Many and many a time he told me the same thing,, and repeated the 
same cruel words. Sometimes when he was out, my grandmother 
would be even more cruel, for she used to hit me and knock me 
about every time she was angry, and grandfather did not often beat 
me.” 

“ Not often ! Oh, poor child, poor child ! ” sighed Ishmael. 

“When grandfather died there was hardly any money in the 
house ; we were so poor that we should not have been able to live if 
it had not been for the charabia. He gave grandmother some money 
for the secretaire that grandfather had been working at before his 
death, and when that money was gone — and grandmother had taken 
the tool-basket to the Mont de Piete, and that money was gone — the 
charabia gave her a little money to go on with. And then he said 
it was time we should be married, and then grandmother would 
have a home with us. They settled it all between them — we were 
to be married to-morrow. The banns were put at the church door, 
and the same day the charabia brought me two new gowns and a 
shawl — a beautiful shawl.” 

‘ ‘ And that made you happy, Paquerette ? ” 

“ Happy ! No, I was miserable, though grandmother kept saying 
how grateful I ought to be, and how the charabia had sent me a 
corbeille, just as if I were a lady. I was miserable and I was afraid, 
dreadfully afraid — afraid of grandmother, afraid of the charabia. 
They both scolded me at every turn and she used to pinch me if she 
saw me crying when the charabia was with us.” 

Paquerette turned up the loose sleeve of her old stuff gown and 
showed a lean, white arm, which had been mercilessly clawed by 
her harpy grandam, and which bore that lady’s sign-manual in ever 
so many places, printed in purple. 

‘ ‘ Last night, after the charabia was gone, I told grandmother that 
I could not and would not marry him. It was no use talking to me. 
I would throw myself in the Seine rather than go to the Mairie with 
that man. She had been drinking — more than usual, I think, and 
slie flew at me and pushed me against the wall, and held me there, 
and said she would stand over me till she had brouglit me to reason. 
She would beat out my brains rather than be conquered by me, I 
think I must have fainted with fright and pain, for I can remember 
nothing more till I woke from a kind of sleep and found myself 
lying on the ground and the room all dark, and I heard grandmother 
snoring in the inner room where she sleeps. 

“Poor little martyr! ” said Ishmael, with infinite compassion. 


AN I8HMAELITE. 


123 


“Wlien I remembered what she had said, I made np my mind to 
go out quietly and throw myself into the river. It was a very short 
walk to the quai de la liapee, and in the darkness no one would see 
me Jump into the water. 1 knew that if I stayed in that house 
grandmother would make me do what she wanted. What power 
had I to resist her ? I went to the door and looked out. There 
were very few lights bimning in the windows looking into the yard, 
and I knew it must be late. I was just going out M hen I remem- 
bered the basket you. gave me ; and I went back and took it from 
its place in my room. I meant to drown the basket as well as myself, 
so that the charabia should not ill rise it when I was dead. And 
then I went out and shut the door behind me, and nobody heard or 
noticed me. The yard door was not locked — it hardly ever is locked 
at night — for there are lodgers who come in at all hours.” 

“And you could think of drowning yourself! Oh, Paquerette, 
how terrible I ” 

“I meant to do it. Anything was better than to be made to 
marry that hateful man. The streets were very quiet when I went 
out — quiet and cold and dark — very cold, and the river seemed a 
long way off for my head had bled a great deal, and I was very 
weak. When I got to the river-side the water looked cold and 
black and dreadful ; and I was afraid to throw myself off the quay. 
I stood ever so long looking down at that dark water, shivering, 
afraid. Once I shut my eyes, and took a step forward, trying to 
drop over the edge blindfold. But I could not do it. I was afraid 
of the water.” 

“ Afraid of death, you mean, poor child. Life is sweeter than we 
ever think till we face that unknown country beyond. ” 

“I must be a coward,” said Paquerette, “for I could not kill 
myself. I had thought of you a good deal all the time — remember- 
ing how kind you were ; wishing that you w^e near to helj) me ; 
wondering if you would ever hear of my death ; if you would be 
sorry. The basket I was carrying seemed a link between us some- 
how — it was something that your hand had touched ; and then I 
thought I would go to you, and ask you to hide me, to save me 
from grandmother ; and then I left the river and found my way 
here. Twice I met a gendarme, who asked me where I was going, 
and I told him I lived at Menilmontant, but I had been taking some 
work home to the Faubourg Saint Antoine, and had lost my way. 
So then the gendarme told me which way to come, and at last I found 
this street. I x>assed the house one day with Pauline Benoit, and 
she showed me your window. The door below was unlocked, and I 
opened it softly and crept upstairs, and sat down in the corner by 
your door to wait for the morning. 

“ AVhat time was it when you came upstairs ?” 

“A clock struck two just before I got to your door.” 

“ And it was nearly six when I found you. Poor child ! you had 
been sitting in the cold four dismal hours I ” 

The first glimmer of chill, gray light stole through the Venetian 
shutter as they were talking, it was seven o’clock, a dull, rainy 
morning. That gleam of daylight seemed to awaken Ishmaelto the 


124 


AJSr ISIIMAELITE. 


realities of life. He began to consider how lie was to dispose of this 
uninvited guest, this wounded bird which had flown to his nest for 
shelter. He got up from his knees and began to pace the floor 
slowly to and fro, glancing every now and then at Paquerette, who 
leaned back in the capacious arm-chair, very white, very weary-look- 
ing, but refreshed by the coffee and comforted by the warmth of the 
stove. 

What was he to do for her ? How best jirotect her from her grand- 
mother’s wrath, from the jiursuit of her hated lover? She could 
not remain under his roof. That was clear. Nor could she seek hos- 
pitality from the Benoit girls. There could be no safe shelter for 
her in the Rue de Sombreuil. Poor, helpless creature, what was he 
to do with her ? Some safe haven must he find her, and at once. 
There was no time to be lost. That wretched old hag, her grand- 
mother, might guess to what refuge she had flown, and might come 
in quest of her before the day was much older. 

There was only one friend of whom he could think in his diffi- 
culty, and that was Lisette Moque, the charcuticr’s wife, otherwise 
Mine. Ladronette. 

“I am going out to see a person who may be of use in giving you 
a home for a little while, ” he said presently. ‘ ‘ Try to get some 
sleep while I am gone ; and perhaps if you were to bathe your head 
in cold water it might do you good. There is some in tJiat pitcher 
by the w^ashstand. You can lock the door directly I am gone, and 
if any one knocks do not answer.” 

“ You don’t think grandmother wdll come and take me away,” she 
said, wdth terror in her eyes. 

“ She may come ; but only keep your door locked till I return, 
and I will answer for it she shall not take you away.” 

“ She has the law on her side — she said she had the right to do 
what she likes with me,” faltered Paquerette. 

“ She shall not touch a hair on your head. I will denounce her to 
the police as a murderess if she comes here after you. They shall 
see your wounded head, they shall hear your story. Au revoir, 
Paquerette. Answer no one — keep quiet and snug till I come back.” 


CHAPTER XYI. 

“can the flag geow wuthout watee?” 

It was nearly nine o’clock when Ishmael w^ent back to his lodging, 
and he w^as troubled at the idea of being late at the works at Belle- 
ville, where his presence w^as doubly needed now that he w^as a per- 
son in authority. He had found some little difficulty in persuading 
Mme. Moque to take charge of Paquerette — a young w’oman who 
had run aw^ay from her grandmother. That might be dangerous. 
As for the blood upon her face, that W’as nothing wonderful. A 
grandmother — and indeed that nearer relation, a mother — had often 
occasion to chastise a rebellious child. A little blood made a great 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


125 


show, but might really mean no more cruelty than a box on the ear ; 
and where was the mother who had never boxed her daughter’s ears ? 

Ishmael tried to explain that this was a case of real cruelty ; that 
Paquerette had narrowly escaped being murdered. And for the 
rest, Mfere Lemoine had no legal authority over this poor waif, 
whose name and whose parentage were involved in mystery. 

“That makes no difference. If Mere Lemoine has brought the 
girl up, M6re Lemoine has a legal hold upon her,” answered M. 
Moque, tenderly trimming a pig’s head aux truffes. A good many 
things were aux truffes in M. Moque’s shop, but the bodily form of 
the truffle was not often visible. That aristocratic vegetable was 
represented by an all-pervading flavor, which imparted a curious 
family likeness to all the comestibles sold in the establishment. 

“ There is only one way for it,” said Lisette. “ The girl ought to 
go to a convent.” 

Ishmael started at the suggestion. It seemed reasonable, kindly 
even ; and yet he was chilled and saddened at the thought of that 
young life entombed within the four walls of a convent. 

“ Give her a shelter for a few days, while we consider what is best 
to be done with her,” he i^leaded. “ She is a quiet, inoffensive creat- 
ure, and I will pay whatever you think right for her board. Her 
grandmother will never trace her to this house.” 

Lisette declared that there was nothing would i)lease her better 
than to oblige her dear M. Ishmael. There was an alcove in the lit- 
tle salon in which Paquerette could sleep. Lisette hoped that she 
had cleanly habits and would not injure the furniture. 

Ishmael was sure that she would be careful, and it was settled 
that she should be taken in for a week or so, to give time for the 
arrangement of her future. 

“ She is very poorly clad,” said Ishmael. “ If you will sjjend two 
or three louis in buying her a decent gown, I will supply the money. 
I wish I could do more.” 

“ It is a great deal for you to do,” said Lisette. “ Sixty francs 
will not go far ; but I dare say I can spare a few things out of my 
own stock, and we’ll manage to make her a trousseau. If she is 
going into a convent she will not want much — not even undercloth- 
ing with some orders. The Carmelites, for instance, wear nothing 
but woollen next the skin.” 

Ishmael shuddered at this detail. Conventual life only presented 
itself to his mind as a living death. And all his clubs and societies, 
his pamphleteers and theorists were virulent in their abuse of monks 
and nuns. 

He hurried back to his lodging. Paquerette unlocked the door 
as he came up the last flight of stairs. 

“ I knew your footstep,” she said. 

“ You have learnt it very quickly,” he answered. 

She had slept an hour, she told him, and was very much refreshed 
by ■ that peaceful slumber in the warmth of the stove. She had 
washed and had arranged her hair neatly, and had tidied the room 
and swept the hearth ; and Ishmael thought his bachelor chamber 
was beautiful somehow by the touch of womanly hands. 


126 


AN tSHMAELITE. 


“ You will have to stay here all day, Mademoiselle Paquerette,” 
he said, becoming more ceremonious than he had been in the sur- 
ju'ise and agitation of the morning ; ‘ ‘ and I am afraid you will 
have a very poor dinner. I have brought you a little ham,” taking 
out a small white paper parcel from his pocket ; “and in this cup- 
board” — opening a door by the fireplace — “there are plates and 
knives, bread and butter, and a bottle of wine. You must try and 
make yourself comfortable here till the evening, when I can leave 
work, and then I w’ill take you to a person who will give you a com- 
fortable home — till you and your friends have decided how you are 
to manage your future life.” 

“ I have no friend — but you,” answered Paquerette. 

“You have the Benoits.” 

“ Yes, they were very good ; but I dare not go to them now.” 

“No ; but they may come to you, j^erhaps. I am sure they may 
be trusted.” 

He had no leisure for talk, so, after a hasty adieu, he started for 
Belleville, at a pace which reminded people of the giant and his 
seven-leagued boots. 

It was after dark when he went back to his nest on the fourth 
story. Paquerette had found the day passing long, longer even than 
her days in the Eue Sombreuil. Unhappily this child of the people 
had no resources of an intellectual kind. She could read but little, 
and with extreme difficulty, and the whole w'orld of books was for 
her an undiscovered country. She looked with absolute 'wonder at 
Ishmael’s small library, something over twenty volumes, neatly 
arranged on a shelf beside the alcove in which the narrow bedstead 
was screened by a brown and yellow cotton curtain. She had never 
seen so many books in her life before. She took one off the shelf 
and x)eeped into it, thinking there might be xuctures, a childish story 
that she could spell out, something to amuse her ; but there were 
only pages of close xDrinting, tables of figures, awful diagrams, 
wheels, x')umx)s, justons — images that ai)j)alled and bewildered her. 
She did not try a second, but went to a window and looked out, 
screening herself with the curtain, lest her grandmother’s dreaded 
eyes should be gazing upward to that fourth stoiy. 

The street was a diill street, the neighborhood half town, half 
country, with a stamx-) of poverty and desolation upoii all things the 
eye looked ui^on. A drove of cattle ■were going to the xmblic slaugh- 
ter-house. Yonder, wdiite against the wintry gray, rose the ] 30 xui- 
lous city of the dead, the cemeteiy of Pere Lachaise, the field of 
rest. Paquerette soon grew tired of looking out of the window, and 
went back to the stove, where she sat on the floor in the warmth, as 
she bad sat through many a winter afternoon in the Hue Sombreuil, 
when her grandmother was out gossixung, and there was no one to 
ux^braid her for her idleness — a x^oor little Cinderella, neglected, 
ignorant, hox^eless, unfriended, forgotten. 

She sat looking at the little patch of red light in the front of the 
stove and thinking ; thinking and wondering, vaguely, disjointedly, 
like a child. How good he was to her, this tall, big, noble gentle- 
man, whose image stood out iu a kind of luminous atmosphere 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


127 


against the dinner background of the greensward at Vincennes, 
the leafy glades of Marly ! He was associated with the two haj^py 
days of her joyless life — days so unlike all the rest of her existence 
that it seemed as if she had been lifted into another world for a lit- 
tle while, only to be dropped back into the abject misery of common 
earth afterward. So interwoven was the thought of him with that 
transient bliss that she almost fancied it was he who had made her 
liappiness. To him she had flown in her trouble, as a bird flies to 
the hill where its nest is built. How good he had been to her ! not 
angry with her for troubling him, as she had feared he might be. 
How kind his voice, his eyes, his gentle touch ! If she could have 
had a little kennel outside his door in that angle where she crouched 
last night, footsore and stiff, and aching in every limb — just a little 
hutch in ■which she could curl herself uj) of a night, and in the day- 
time be his serwant, clean his room, cook for him, wait upon him — 
she could imagine no more blissful existence. But this was not to 
be. He was going to take her to some one else who would be kind 
to her. She was not grateful in advance for that kindness from 
strangers. She wanted him to be kind, no one else. Would he but 
treat her as kindly as good men treat their dogs, she would be con- 
tent. She would love him, and be faithful to him as dogs are faith- 
ful. There w^as a young house painter in the Rue Sombreuil who 
had a long, lanky beast of the lurcher species which adored him, 
slept outside his door of a night, followed at his heels wherever he 
went, carried his stick or his hat. Paquerette "would have been to 
Ishmael as that dog, could she have chosen her destiny. 

He came back soon after dusk, and asked kindly how she had 
managed to get through the day, whether she had enough to eat, 
and if her head had left off aching. And then he opened a parcel, 
and gave her a little shawl which he had bought for her on his way 
home — a neat little checked shawl, such as young Frenchwomen of 
the w^orking classes wear pinned across their shoulders. He had 
made this further outlay wishing her to look as respectable as might 
be when he presented her to Mme. Moque, and the warm gray and 
scarlet shawl, neatly folded across the jrretty shoulders, concealed 
the threadbare gown, and was cei’tainly an improvement. 

Paquerette was enraptured. The charabia had, as it were, loaded 
her with gifts, and she had hardly thanked him. Last night she 
had left all his finery — necklace and ear-rings, gowns, shawl— flung 
in a chaotic heap upon her wretched little bed. But she was over- 
come by this last kindness from Ishmael, just as she had been by his 
gift of the basket on St. John’s Day. 

When they were lea-ving, she stopped as suddenly. “ My basket ! ” 
she exclaimed. “ Oh, please let -me have my basket.” 

He handed it to her, smiling, yet deeply touched by this earnest- 
ness of hers— touched to think that she had treasured those withered 
buds and berries, sprays of oak and beech, for half a year, and had 
reiiiembered them last night, when she was face to face with the 
awful alternative of suicide. 

They said very little as they walked at a brisk pace to the distant 
Rue Franche-Colline, where the charcutier’s shop stood out with a 


128 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


certain smartness and dazzle from the general dulness of the street. 
It was in an old and crowded quarter, not far from the abattoir 
where were sacrificed those pigs which formed the basis of M. 
Moqne’s stock in trade. 

Mine. Moqne received Paqnerette with kindness leavened by con- 
descension. She was curiously impressed by her appearance, which, 
despite her shabby gown and clumsy boots, and pinched, pale look 
of a creature reared in abject poverty, had a certain air of distinc- 
tion, an elegant fragility, which the Abigail’s quick eye discerned 
at a glance. 

“ She would be absolutely pretty, or better than pretty, if she 
were well dressed,” thought "Lisette, and she began to have ideas 
about the platform of the Palais de Cristal, and to speculate 
whether something might not be made by forming the girl for a 
XMiblic career. 

“ If she had but an ear and a little sprig of a voice now,” thought 
Lisette. 

In a French concert-room voice is ever a secondary consideration ; 
and Lisette knew by her own personal experience what a very small 
organ can be made to satisfy a Parisian audience. 

Moved by reflections of this business-like character, Mme. Moque 
took the girl suddenly in her arms and kissed her on both cheeks. 

“ She shall be to me as a younger sister,” she said. “Have no 
fear. Monsieur Ishmael. I shall find the way to make this 
child happy. And now go to your dinner and give yourself no fur- 
ther care. Come and dine with us next Sunday, and you shall see 
what I have made of Mademoiselle Paquerette.” 

“ Please do not call me mademoiselle,” said the girl, dazzled by 
the splendor of Mme. Moque’s salon, which was as new and as won- 
derful to her as would have been the most gorgeous reception in 
the Elys^e or Tuileries. That gold and alabaster clock, actually 
ticking, those candelabra with candles in them, the flowered carpet 
u^Don a red biick floor, the stiff, vivid yellow damask, the new shiny 
mahogany. What matter that it was furniture of the very poorest, 
Tulgarest type, the coarsest workmanship ? The general e&ct was 
ovei-powering to an eye educated by the sombre tones, the dull 
squalor of the Eue Sombreuil. And when, after Ishmael’s depart- 
ure, Mme. Moque showed Paquerette the little bed behind the yel- 
low curtains which draped the alcove, a very narrow, and sooth to 
say a very hard little bed, cramped and stony as the grave itself, the 
girl was completely overcome. 

‘ ‘ I am to sleep in this room ! ” she exclaimed, open-eyed with 
wonder. 

‘ ‘ Yes ; it is as a favor to Monsieur Ishmael. For no other consid- 
eration would I have put up a bed in this room, but when he asked 
it of me as a concession to an old friend ” 

“ He is an old friend of yours, then,” murmured Paquerette, and 
her eyes lighted up with keenest interest in the question. “ You 
have known him very long ? ” 

“ I have known him ever since he was a baby. I knew him as a 
child, as a boy.” 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


129 


“ Ciel ! And when ho was little was he handsome as he is now 

good as he is now ? ” 

Lisette sighed, closed her eyelids very tight, with a look which 
meant unutterable things, and shook her head vehemently. 

‘‘ There are things which must not be spoken about,” she said. 

You must never question me about Monsieur Ishmael’s past his- 
tory— never. You must accept his kindness and be grateful. No 
more. Y'ou see him as a workman, laboring shoulder to shoulder 
with other workmen, in a blouse and linen trousers. That is well, 
since it is his choice so to live. You will think of him and speak of 
him as Ishmael the stonemason, and under no other character ; that 
is his wish.” 

“If he were a king I could not honor him more than I do,” said 
Piiquerette, v/ith innocent frankness. “ But I am glad he is only a 
workman. He would seem so far away if he were anything else.” 

Again Mme. Moqiie screwed up her eyelids, and extinguished her 
bright beady eyes, and shook her head significantly ; but Paquerette 
was too simple to understand this byplay. 

Ishmael dined with the Moques next Sunday, and found Paque- 
rette wonderfully smartened and improved in her aj)pearance by 
Lisette’s care. If he could have found any fault, it was that she 
was a little too smart, too appretee — the artistic carelessness of her 
loosely piled-up tresses a shade too elaborate — the picturesque 
sailor-knot of her ponceau neck-ribbon a thought too intentional. 
But it was all Lisette’s doing, and it was meant in kindness ; so he 
suggested no fault in his proteg6e’s ensemble. She wore a very old 
black silk gown of Lisette’s, which had been subjected to every 
process of revivification known at that peiiod of art ; but, although 
the gf)wn was in a manner at the death-rattle, it had been made to 
fit Paquerette’s slim figure so perfectly, and it was adjusted with 
such a superior style, that it looked almost elegant. 

After the dinner, which was excellent, Mme. Moque suggested a 
walk on the boulevards. The night was frosty and clear, the stars 
were brilliant, and the lamps at the cafes would be brighter still ; 
or, at any rate, a nearer, more human brightness, that one could 
enjoy more. There was even a x^ossibility of a theatre, Lisette 
thought, if she once got the two men out-of-doors; and, of all 
earthly jfieasures, Lisette adored the paradise of the Theatre Fran- 
9 ais, where, if the acting were sometimes above her head, the gowns 
and jewels always appealed to her finest feelings. There was no 
performance at the Palais de Cristal on the Sabbath, so she, who 
had on week nights to amuse other people, was free to seek amuse- 
ment for herself. 

“If I do not see other talent occasionally, how do you suppose I 
am to create any original effects ? ” she asked the charcutier some- 
times, when he was reluctant to pay for a couple of seats at a theatre. 

To-night Mme. Moque had a secondary motive for wishing to be 
out-of-doors. She wanted a confidential talk with Ishmael, and no 
such conversation was i^ossible in the yellow salon, twelve feet by 
fourteen, where every word anybody said must needs be overheard 
by everybody else. 

9 


130 


AN I8IIMAELITE. 


So, directly dinner was over, they started for their evening walk, 
Mme. Moqne suggesting that they should take their coffee at the 
Cafe de la Eotonde in the Palais Koyal, which would be much gayer 
than taking it at home. 

“And ever so much dearer,” said M. Moque, who never took his 
eye off the goal which he had set before him at the beginning of his 
career — namely, a house at Asnieres, and a snug little income from 
the funds. Even a couple of cups of coffee at a fashionable cafe 
meant so many sous subtracted from the sum total of his future 
wealth — so many days pinched off the iDeriod in which he was to 
live at his ease in his suburban villa. 

Lisette told her Alphonse to offer Puquerette his arm, and to go on 
in front, while she took possession of Ishmael, and they two brought 
up the rear. In this wise she was sure of not being taken by sur- 
prise by Paquerette creeping up behind and hearing herself the sub- 
ject of conversation. 

“ Well,” she said, as soon as the others were out of earshot, “what 
do you think of her ? Have I not begun to form her already ? ” 

Islimael did not want to be ungrateful, but he was too sincere to 
be capable of concealing his real sentiments. 

“ Do not make her a coquette,” he said. 

“ Make her a coquette — I ! ” cried Mme. Moque, as if the sugges- 
tion of such a possibility were absolute foolishness. “ Coquetry is 
not in my line, I assure you. A respectable married W'oman, with 
household cai'es, and business, and a profession — there is very little 
leisure left in my life for coquetry. But I confess to taking some 
pains with that x)oor benighted child, who had no more idea of do- 
ing her hair than a heathen. I thought you would like to see her 
looking nice.” • 

“ So I do,” answered Ishmael ; “ only I fancied she had somewhat 
of a coquettish air — a consciousness of being pretty, which I never 
noticed in her before.” 

“She is not pretty,” said Lisette, decisively ; “at best she is only 
interesting. And as for consciousness, if you suppose that she, or 
any woman li\ung, is without vanity, you are less sensible than I 
thought you.” 

“ She looked charming in that gown of youi’s,” pursued Ishmael, 
with an apologetic air. 

“ She has actually no figure,” protested Lisette. “ I had to take 
that gown in ever so many inches.” 

Ishmael could not help thinking that if this w^ere so the negative 
type of figure had merits in the way of grace and elegance which he 
never had observed in the positive. 

“ And now I want to go to the bottom of things, to have a ‘serious 
talk with you,” began Lisette, in a gmver tone. ‘/ You know that I 
took care of you wdien you were a baby, and my feelings for you are 
purely maternal.” 

“You were always good to me,” answered Ishmael, with a sigh, 
thinking how little he knew of maternal affection, which, in his case, 
had meant no more than capricious kisses, occasional kindnesses, and 
habitual neglect. 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


131 


“ Well, then, you will believe that I am your friend in all I say. 
Now, I want to know what you mean to do with this girl— at once— 
before we go a step further. She is a very nice little thing— 
granted ; interesting, and with a certain childlike grace which might 
be developed into the real Parisian chic.” 

“ Heaven forbid ! ” cried Ishmael. 

“ But what then ? First and foremost, do you mean to marrv her? ” 

Ishmael reddened to the roots of his hair, and then gradually 
paled again. First a hot feeling, and then a cold feeling ; and the 
coldness meant a negative reply. 

“ I have no such thought,” he said. “ It will be many years be- 
fore I think of marriage ; and when, if I ever do marry, I should 
like my wife to be my superior— a woman of education, who could 
make me better than I am. I should like to be able to reverence 
my wife.” 

“ Then Ptiquerette is out of the question,” replied Lisette, with 
evident satisfaction. “ And now the question is, what to do with 
her ? To my mind there are only two ways in which she can be pro- 
vided for. The first, which I suggested the other day, is to put her 
into a convent ; the second, which I have no doubt she would pre- 
fer, is to bring her out at the Palais de Cristal.” 

‘ ‘ Bring her out — Paquerette — as a concert singer ? ” cried Ishmael, 
thinking Lisette must have suddenly gone out of her wits. 

“ Why not ? She has no voice, I grant you ; but I have found 
out that she has an ear — an ear as fine and true as a skylark’s. And 
I can make her sing. She could sing little patois songs, dressed as 
a peasoint. She is no beauty ; but in a Normandy cap, a pair of 
sabots, a red petticoat, and a little blue bodice, she would take Paris 
by storm. Her ignorance, her childishness, would not matter a bit. 
That would all pass for chic, originality. Let me train her and 
bring her out in my own way, and she shall astonish you before you 
are a year older. It shall cost you nothing. I will keep her, and 
teach her, and clothe her at my own expense, and I will ask no more 
for my pains than her salary for the first three years.” 

“Let her appear in that place — before all those men— smoking, 
drinking, laughing, quarrelling — the very ofial of the town ! ” said 
Ishmael. 

“Your mother acted in that jfiace, monsieur,” replied Lisette, 
deeply ofiended. 

His mother ! Yes. The thought was horrible. Still more horri- 
ble was it to remember that when his mother acted in that theatre 
she was already so deeply sunken in the mire that one degradation 
the more hardly counted. But Paquerette, poor child of the gutter, 
was yet unsullied. And he shrank from the thought of placing her 
in such an atmosphere. 

“ I myself have the honor to appear there nightly,” continued 
Lisette. “I do not feel myself degraded by the applause of the 
people. I wonder that you, who wear a blouse and live by the 
labor of your hands, can" speak so slightingly of your brother-work- 
men.” 

“There are j)eople and people,” answered Ishmael. “I hope 


132 


AN ISUMAELITE. 


you do not take the class who drink, and smoke, and blaspheme at 
the Palais de Oristal, as the type of the artisan, any more than you 
would those devils who used to smoke and drink at the wine-shoj^s 
by the barriers in the year ’32, when the cholera was raging all over 
Prance, watching the hearses going to the cemetery, and calling out 
‘ Your good health, Monsieur Morbus,’ as the dead went by. I have 
no clanship with such men as I saw at your concert hall.” 

Lisette, still offended, owned that the frequenters of the Palais 
were perhaps not of the first class. They liked songs a little “ off,” 
so to speak, speeches that were double-entendre. But what then ? 
One must laugh. 

“ I should not like to hear them laugh at Pdquerette,” answered 
Ishmael, sternly. ‘ ‘ I should feel inclined to pitch them head over 
heels into the street. No ; I would ever so much rather she went to 
a convent ; though that seems veiy dreary.” 

‘‘It is dreary; she would pine to death in six months,” said 
Lisette, who had set her heart upon bringing out Paquerette, with 
an eye to profit. There was money to be made by a young, attrac- 
tive debutante ; and Lisette had put the girl through a few little ex- 
periments in the vocal and histrionic way, and had discovered that 
she would be very quick to learn anything, and indeed i^ossessed the 
mimetic faculty in a marked degree. 

“One thing is certain,” she said, presently; “that poor child 
must not go back to the Faubourg St. Antoine to be beaten to death 
by her grandmother.” 

“No, she must not go back,” answered Ishmael, gravely; “she 
must go into a convent. I will make inquiries to-morrow.” 

“ It will cost money,” said Lisette. 

“ I must find the money.” 

They were on the boulevard by this time. They had pierced 
through narrow streets to the Boulevard Montmartre, and were now 
descending into the full glory of the Boulevard des Italiens, which 
was crowded with pedestrians, and gay with a cold and frosty bright- 
ness, the lamps below burning brighter, as the stars burnt above in 
the clear, keen air. Tortoni’s and all the fashionable caf6s were 
crowded, warm with much people and much gas, glowing with light, 
sonorous with the buzz of voices and the chinking of glasses and 
teaspoons. 

“lam dying for a cup of coffee,” said Lisette. “ Suppose we go 
to Laperle’s?” 

Laperle’s was one of the smaller cafgs, an old house, with the 
ground-floor rooms almost as low as an entresol — a snug little nest 
of three small rooms, opening into each other, with sanded floors, 
originally intended as a compliment to the English patrons of the 
establishment. Laperle’s was a favorite house with the artistic 
classes and the Bohemians, and was always full. The ranks of fail- 
ure pe never thinned — eveiy day brings recruits to that regiment. 

Lisette pushed her way to the on6 vacant table in a snug little cor- 
ner near the stove and the other three followed her. The whole 
place was like an oven, the atmosphere a mist of light and dust and 
heat and tobacco-smoke, flavored with cognac. 


Ali I8UMAEL1TE. 133 

“ How delicious after the cold outside ! ” said Lisette, with a retro- 
spective shiver. 

“ Bourn,” cried a waiter, in response to the fairy chink of a tea- 
spoon ; and Lisette, who was more at home than her husband in the 
cafes of Paris, ordered four demi-tasses, with accompaniment of 
cognac understood. 

The room was crowded. They had only just space enough to slip 
into their seats at the little table. Paquerette, as the smallest of 
the four, screwed herself into the angle of the wall, where she sat 
looking at the company and the lights with wide-open eyes. It was 
not by any means a splendid place of entertainment, but it was 
curiously different from the Faithful Pig or the little wine shojj in the 
Ptue de la Eoquette to which she had gone upon occasions in quest 
of her grandfather. There was here a life and brightness, a flavor 
of elegance, gayety without drunkenness, coats instead of blouses, 
tobacco of a difierent odor, all things that were new to Paquerette. 

While she was gazing, interested, amused, as in a kind of fairy- 
land, her eyes suddenly encountered another pair of eyes, which 
fixed her own by the intentness of their gaze. 

The eyes belonged to a young man, elegantly but carelessly 
dressed, with coat wide of>en over a velvet waistcoat, Byronic col- 
lar, necktie loosely fastened, as if it were midsummer. 

He was leaning with his elbow on a table, talking to a burly, dark- 
visaged man, who looked like a painter. He had been declaiming 
vehemently to his friend a minute ago, but now he was silent, ab- 
sorbed in his contemplation of Paquerette. 

He was fair and pale, slender, fragile-looking, the very opposite 
to Ishmael, with his dark, strongly marked brows, black eyes, broad 
shoulders, tall figure. Paquerette looked at the stranger curiously, 
wondering that there should be people so different. 

Ishmael sat with his back to the room, facing Paquerette. 

He saw that sudden wondering look of hers. 

“ Do you see any one you know here ? ” he asked. 

“No,” she said, blushing at the question. 

“But you were looking as if you recognized some one,” he said. 

He turned involuntarily as he spoke and surveyed the crowded 
room. 

The young man who had been looking at Paquerette rose hastily, 
came over to Ishmael, and gave him a friendly slap on the shoulder. 

It was Hector de Valnois, Ishmael’s friend of the 4th of December. 

“WTiy have you forgotten your promise and never been to see 
me ? ” he asked. 

“Not because I am ungrateful, but because I did not want to 
trouble vou too soon,’’ answered Ishmael, grasping Valnois’ proffered 
hand— such a small womanish hand in the stonemason’s broadened 

“ You would not have troubled me. Well, I am glad I have met 
you, if only by accident. Do you often come here ? ” 

“ I was never here till to-night.” 

“ So ! I thought if you had been an habitue I must have met you 
before now.” 


134 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


CHAPTEE XVII. 

“a man’s heart DEVISETH HLS •WAT.” 

Islimael introduced liis friends to M. de Valnois, who made him- 
self at once at home with Mme. Moc^ue, and would fain have been 
as easy with the charcutier, but that respectable citizen had a shy- 
ness in the presence of the artistic classes, the outward sign of 
which was a kind of sullen ferocity not over pleasant to strangers. 

“Your friend is red, I take it,” whispered Hector to Ishmael ; 
“vermilion among the red.s.” 

“ On the contrary, he is a strong Bonapartist, and sighs for a sec- 
ond empire.” 

“ Then be assured he will be gratified ; the empire is at hand. 
The very air we breathe is full of signs and tokens of an approach- 
ing despotism ; a friendly despotism, a paternal despotism, a desj^ot- 
ism encouraging to trade, favorable to the development of art ; the 
foster-mother of genius, mark you, but a despotism all the same. 
We. have a press that is bound hand and foot ; a Senate that is 
X^acked with zealots for one cause ; a police of unx^aralleled strength 
and acuteness. In a word, we are on the eve of a second emx^ire, 
more brilliant, more splendid, more costly, more luximous than the 
first — as gaslight is to candle, as aqua fortis to cognac.” 

“Enteiprise has x^rospered and good work has been done for the 
world by despots before now,” said Ishmael, remembering what his 
employer had told him about the building trade. 

“ My friend, all great works have been done under tyrants, from 
the Pyramids to the Escurial,” answered Hector. “ Show me any 
great work that has ever been achieved by Eexmblicans. Their mis- 
sion is not to do, but to undo.” 

In America ” suggested Ishmael. 

“ Oh, don’t talk of a handful of savages, la bas creatures in wam- 
X^um and feathers.” 

“ The Eexmblic of Venice ” 

“ A tyranny divided by ten, a desxsotism upon ten feet. But it is 
a solecism to talk x^olitics in the x^resence of ladies, and mademoiselle 
has a frightened look, as if our big words had scai’ed her. Is she 
your sister ? ” 

“No.” 

“ Ah, I forgot. You are alone in Paris;” 

“ Quite alone. Madame Moque is an old friend, and mademoiselle 
is a guest of Madame Moque’s. ” 

“ I see ; and the starlit night tempted you all to the boulevard. 
There will be skating before long, if this frost continue. Do you 
skate, mademoiselle ? ” 

Puquerette blushed and faltered a negative. She had seen the 
boys sliding and skating on the Canal de I’Ourque. She had even 
longed to join them a year or two ago, when she was in the gamine 


AN ISmiAELITE. 


135 


stage of her existence. Beyond this much she hardly knew what 
skating meant. 

“ It is a new emotion — a new rapture. You should make Mon- 
sieur Ishmael teach you ; or failing that, let me be your instructor. 
Suppose we arrange a party for the Bois. If the wind do not change 
before Wednesday the lake will be frozen. What say you, Madame 
Moque, shall we arrange a party for Wednesday afternoon — a skat- 
ing party ? ” 

“ Mademoiselle is going into a convent next week,” interjected 
Ishmael, curtly ; “ she will have no time to learn skating.” 

“ Going into a convent ! C’est raide ! And you bring her to La- 
perle’s to prepare her for conventual life ! Does that count as a part 
of her noviciate ? ” 

Ishmael made no reply, and Hector went back to his friend at the 
other little table, after a smile and a bow to the ladies of the party. 
But ten minutes later, when they were all leavieg the cafe, Hector 
came up behind Ishmael on the boulevard and slipped his hand 
through his arm. “ I want five minutes’ talk with you, my friend,” 
he said. “If you are walking toward *Ihe Porte St. Denis, so 
am I.” 

“ I would as soon go that way as any other if these ladies have no 
objection,” answered Ishmael, looking at Lisette, who declared im- 
mediately that she had been on the point of proposing that they 
should walk up the boulevard and go home by the Kue St. Denis, 
even if it were ever so much longer than those narrow streets and 
short cuts by which Alphonse had brought them. 

“It is a delightful night, and we are out to enjoy ourselves,” said 
Lisette, who was favorably impressed by this elegant young man in 
the loose steel-gray overcoat, with a fur collar. A fur collar always 
appealed to Lisette’s feelings. It was suggestive of rank and fash- 
ion, of noble youth which runs through a fortune, and gives nice 
little suppers to actresses at Vefours or the Maison Doree, to come 
to an untimely close afterward, perhaps, on one of those marble 
couches in the Morgue. 

So Ishmael and Hector walked up the boulevard with Lisette be- 
tween them, while M. Moque still kej^t a few j^aces in the front, 
with Puquerette upon his arm. The boulevard was a new experience 
to her ; the lights, the people, all radiant under the brilliant winter 
sky, seemed to belong to another world. She had but one flaw in 
her delight, and that was the eYer-present fear of meeting her grand- 
mother roaming about in quest of her, but she comforted herself 
with the thought that locomotion was not in Mere Lemoine’s habits, 
and that it would be only by a superhuman effort she would get as 
far as this part of Paris. 

“ What an interesting, childlike face that is,” said Hector, with a 
motion of his head toward the girl in front of them. “Why con- 
vent ? ” 

“’Because she is about the most friendless and desolate creature 
you can imagine,” i-bplied Ishmael, “ and a convent is the only pos- 
sible home for her^’ 

“ I am friendless and desolate — very desolate when I have failed 


136 


AN imMAELlTE. 


to get my last vaudeville accepted by one of the theatres,” said 
Hector lightly; “ but I don’t go into a monastery.” 

“ You are a man, and can tight the battle of life.” 

“ So can a woman, and she is much better armed than we are. 
There is always a chance for a woman. There is always one fool in 
the world who will waste his love and his money upon her. If she 
is ever so old and so ugly she has only to wait her time, and she 
will find herself somebody’s b 6 guin — somebody’s mania. There are 
those who worship the x^oetiy of ugliness. There are devotees who 
adore a squint, who see grace in diy bones, beauty in a splay foot. I 
assure you, Ishmael, there never was a Cleopatra living who could 
not find her Antony, ready to lose a world for her. And when 
Cleopatra has the languorous blue eyes, the j^oetical pallor of your 
young friend yonder, she is sure of success in life.” 

“ What kind of success ? ” asked Ishmael, in a low voice, that 
trembled ever so little with suppressed indignation. “ There is a 
good fortune that leads to the gutter and the hospital — j)erha2is you 
mean that.” 

“ Far from it, my friend. The gutter and the hospital are remote 
contingencies in every woman’s life — just as there are rocks and 
sandbanks that lie in wait for every ship that sails. Many a vessel 
gets safely to her haven ; and why should not your little Mend 
there be lucky ? ” 

“The only luck she could have would be to many an honest 
man,” answered Ishmael, bluntly; “and there are not many men 
who w’ould care to marry a girl brought uj) in dire ignorance, and 
reared amid squalor and drunkenness.” 

“ There are men who will sacrifice a few prejudices for the sake 
_jof a pretty face. I do not say that mademoiselle yonder is abso- 
lutely beautiful ; but there are some faces that are worse than beau- 
tiful. They do more mischief in the world than beauty pure and 
simple. But j^ray who is the young lady, and how do you come to 
be interested in her fate ? ” 

Ishmael told Paquerette’s story as briefly as possible. 

“ And she fled to you for refuge, having no other friend ; and to 
reward her faith you will hide her from all that is joyous and beauti- 
ful in life ; entomb her within the four walls of a convent — where, 
as she is friendless and j)enniless, she can only enter as a lay sister — 
a drudge — a femme de jDeine without wages — condemned to wear 
coarse clothing, to eat coarsest fare, io sleej) on a j)allet, to rise, be- 
fore dawn, to 2)ray continually, to obey blindly, to be silent when 
her young lips are eager to be talking, to be grave when her young 
heart would fain rejoice in laughter, to fbrego all human love, all 
human jiraise and admiration for all the days of her life. That is 
how you would recomjjense her for that innocent faith, that lovely 
childlike trust in your goodness and your bounty which brought her 
to your door, wounded, massacred almost — a creature most worthy of 
l^ity and kindness. I cannot applaud your chivalry, Monsieur Ishmael. ” 

“ Believe me, I have no desire but to do what is best for Pa- 
querette,” said Ishmael, considerably shaken by this passionate sum- 
ming-up of plain facts. 


AN I8IIMAELITE. 


137 


“I am entirely of monsieur’s opinion,” said Lisette, smiling and 
sparkling upon Hector with the bright black eyes and the white 
teeth which time could not wither. “ I consider that it would be 
positively cruel, an act of tyranny, to shut that poor child up in a 
convent. She has had little enough pleasure in life — none that I can 
make out, except two solitary days in the country, when she met 
Monsieur Ishmael. And to bury her alive among a set of stern 
nuns, before she has tasted one of the pleasures of life. No ; as you 
say, monsieur, let her have her chance. Every woman has a right 
to her chance. There is always the convent, my faith, when one 
has had enough of the world ; just as there is always the river 
when one has had enough of life. Let the poor little soul have her 
opportunities, and she may make an artistic success. I pledge my- 
self to put her on the high road to fortune, if Monsieur Ishmael will 
only let me have my own way.” 

Upon this there followed a long argument about the Palais do 
Cristal, in which Lisette urged the wisdom of allowing Paqueretto 
to make her debut at that place of entertainment as soon as she was 
able to sing three or four patois songs. Hector offered to write 
them for her, and to get them set to music by his friend the repeti- 
teur at the Palais Royal. The thing was quite in his line, and they 
wmuld x>roduce such songs which should take the town by storm. 

Ishmael argued gravely against the whole scheme. Paquerette 
W’as unsuited to such a life. The Palais de Cristal was a low place. 

“ What does that matter ? Let her but make a hit with one of my 
songs and she will be engaged at a boulevard theatre in a trice.” 

A boulevard theatre ! Poor little Paquerette ! Ishmael had been 
to the boulevard theatres. He had seen a fairy spectacle in which 
songs and dances and crowds of lightly clad sylphs w^ere the distin- 
guishing features. It was before the days of the Riche au bois, and 
the i^iece a femmes had not yet reached its climax ; but Ishmael had 
seen enough to prejudice him against the stage of the boulevard, 
and he felt that he would rather see Paquerette entombed in the 
gloom and silence of the severest conventual order than exhibiting 
her fragile, flower-like prettiness side by side with the women he had 
seen across the footlights. 

He was not a man to be talked out of his opinion even by his best 
friend, and though he respected Hector as a man who knew the 
world and knew Paris, he was not persuaded into approving the con- 
cert-hall or the stage as a future for Paquerette. But he was in- 
fluenced, and deej^ly, by what Hector had said about convent life ; 
and he told himself that in this the Parisian had spoken the words 
of truth and Tvusdom, and that he, Ishmael, had no right to sacrifice 
the girl’s liber^ to the convenience of the moment. She had flown 
to him for a remge, and was he to give her a cage ? She had come 
to him for bread, and could he give her a stone ? 

He remembered, with a thrill of tenderest pity, her happiness that 
spring afternoon at Vincennes, when they two had danced together 
on the greensward ; he recalled the picture of her enraptured face as 
she flitted from flower to flower in the wood at Marly ; and, re- 
membering these things, was he to give her oyer to the gloom of an 


138 


AN ISBMAELITE. 


existence in wliicli there slionld be no dancing, no summer holiday 
in the woodland or 2)ark ? Was he, who had no right over her except 
her own helj^lessness, her childlike trust in him, w^as he to be the 
harsh arbiter of her destiny, and to give her over to a death in life 
within stone walls? 

In his experience he pictured a convent as infinite gloom — a 2)lace 
of everlasting penance and prayer and self-sacrifice and surrender. 
He thought of something much worse than the reality, and he shud- 
dered at the idea of his own hardness of heart. 

“ You are right,” he said presently, “ she shall not go into a con- 
vent — that was a wild idea of mine. We must find a home for her 
somewhere with some good woman who will teach her a trade. She 
will be satisfied with veiy little, and we will not barter her liberty 
against a crust.” 

‘ ‘ You had much better let madame work out her own little scheme, ” 
said Hector lightly. “ Hero we are at the gate ; here our w^ays 2)art. 
Come and see me soon, Ishmael. To-morrow, if you W’ill. Good- 
night, madame. How about my suggestion of a party for the lake 
next Wednesday afternoon ? ” 

Lisette declared that she would, of all things, love to see the 
skaters, should there really be ice on Wednesday ; but Aljfiionse 
reminded her that an excursion to the Bois would occuiy the whole 
afternoon, and that as she had to go to the Palais de Cristal at seven 
in the evening, there would be no margin for rest, and the quality 
of her voice would inevitably sufier by fatigue, to say nothing of the 
chances of hoarseness from exposure to the cold. In a word, M. 
Moque asserted his marital authority in the face of a too fascinating 
stranger, for although he loved to talk of his wife’s conquests, and 
the golden youth who languished for a smile from those carmined 
Iqis, he was not exem2)t from the ^oangs of jealousy. 

Lisette shrugged her shoulders and submitted. 

“ I am a slave to my xn’ofession,” she said. 

“ I shall come and hear you sing to-morrow evening,” said Hec- 
tor, as they shook hands. “I feel convinced beforehand that you 
are throwing away your talents in that bouge yonder, and that you 
ought to<be at one of the boulevard theatres.” 

On this they parted, Lisette entranced by the easy charm of a man- 
ner which realized all her dreams of golden youth. De Valnois had 
not left them a minute before she began to question Ishmael about 
liiin. She was a little dashed upon hearing that he was only an 
author — an author at present hardly known to fame, and that he 
lived upon a second floor in the Kue Montorgueil. She had ex- 
pected to be told that he was a sin-ig of nobility, squandering a 
])rincely fortune upon diamonds, dinners and suiq^ers after the xolay. 
A journalist, a ifiaywright— that was nothing very great, but he had 
charming manners all the same, 


yUY ISHMAELITE. 


139 


CHAPTEK XVIII. 

“ MABRED IN THE HAND OF THE POTTER.” 

Lisette Moqne was a person not easily to be diverted from any 
scheme which she had devised for her own advancement and enrich- 
ment ; and having taken it into her head that a good deal of money 
might be made out of so young and teachable a pupil as Paquerette, 
she had already built up half a dozen castles in the air with no better 
basis than that golden possibility. Paquerette was young, Paque- 
rette W'as interesting, Paquerette possessed qualities of manner and 
person wdiicli, trained by an experienced mistress, might be made 
the quintessence of chic, originality, audacity ; and so improved, 
and, as it w^ere, crystallized, Paquerette ought to take the towm by 
storm, and make a fortune within the first three years of her pro- 
fessional career. 

For a popularity so essentially transient as that of a cafe chantant 
j)rima donna those first three years would be the golden harvest 
time. While Paquerette w^as fresh and childlike and fair, the town 
would iTin after her. A song from those young lips would have a 
piquancy to catch the Jaded Parisian public, to set managers and 
speculators bidding against each other for the possession of this last 
novelty. It W’as aggravating beyond measure that Ishmael’s pro- 
vincial notions of propriety should stand in Lisette’s way to putting 
money in her own purse, and, in a minor degree, enriching her 
protege^. 

Bent on accomplishing her purpose, Lisette held forth eloquently 
to Paquerette upon the charms and chances of life behind the foot- 
lights, either in a cafe chantant or a theatre. She dwelt upon the 
sunny side — the apjfiause, the feasting, flowers, fine gowns, horses 
and carriages, and diamond necklaces, dropping, as it w^ere, from 
the skies, so ethereal and free from earthly taint seemed their origin 
as described by Lisette. 

Poor little Paquerette sat there sewung, turning and patching up a 
wunter petticoat wdiich Mme. Moque had given her, and felt as if she 
W'ere w'andering in some wonderful dreamland, a fairy region of 
bliss and light and hot-house flowers, such flowers as madame had 
shown her yesterday afternoon at a shop in the Bue Castiglione. 
And in such a wonderland she, Paquerette, might dwell if she 
would follow Mme. Moque’s advice and learn to sing. Her voice 
w’as a poor little pipe, madanie told her, but the teaching in such 
cases was more than half the battle, and madanre was prepared to 
make a perfect slave of herself, out of sheer goodness of heart, in 
making Paquerette a singer. 

There was a little old wheezy piano in Mme. Moque’s salon, and on 
this she strummed the accompaniment of a Palais Eoyal song, one 
of the sillv successes of the hour— a little patois song, with a non- 
sense refrain and a little dance between the verses. Paquerette after 


140 


AN' ISHMAELITE. 


three or four rehearsals, did the thing admirably. It was just as if 
it had been composed on purpose for her, Lisette said. The sweet, 
flute-like voice, the childishly timid enunciation, just touching the 
syllables in a coquettish staccato, the light girlish^ figure circling 
gracefully in three or four turns of a waltz, to the tira lira lira la of 
the refrain, all were perfect in their way. 

“Dressed as I could dress you for that song, you would be the 
prettiest ingenue in Paris,” cried Lisette, enchanted. 

She took Paquerette to the Palais de Cristal that evening and let 
her sit in a shabby little room behind the platform from which she 
could hear the singing. It had been tlm green-room in days gone 
by, and reeked with the grease and tobacco-smoke of a quarter of 
a century. The old baize- covered benches against the wall, the 
paper, the ceiling, all were black with the grime of generations of 
cabotins. The speculator who had renewed and glorified the front 
of the building had left dressing-rooms and green-room untouched. 
He had drawn a hard and fast line between the public and the 
artists. Expenditure on the comfort of the latter would have been 
foolishness. 

Paquerette sat in a corner near the half-open door, and listened to 
the song, the laughter, the applause. She peeped from her retreat 
every now and then ; she could see the lights, the artificial flowers, 
lace draperies, gilding, tawdry decorations, and across a dazzling row 
of lamps she saw the crowd of grinning faces, melting away into an 
atmosjfiiere of dust and gaslight toward the end of the building. It 
was a very vulgar paradise, a cheap paradise, redolent of tobacco 
and vile cofiee, with a taint of still viler brandy floating in the 
air ; but the effect of the lights and music and the multitude of 
faces upon Paquerette was as dazzling as the splendor of the opera 
house in the Eue Lepelletier would have been upon a more educated 
mind. Never before had she seen any such haunt of pleasure. 
Lamp-light and music and happy faces were an enthralling 
novelty. 

While she sat listening, entranced, to the quartette from ‘ ‘ Eigo- 
letto ” — bawled with delirious vehemence by the soprano and ranted 
vigorously by a very hoarse baritone, while the tenor and contralto 
affected a coquettish lightness which touched the confines of low 
comedy — the swing-door of the green-room was opened and a young 
man entered. Paquerette, with her eyes riveted on the j)latform, 
neither saw nor heard anything behind her, and she was startled by 
a languid voice murmuring in her ear : 

“ Good evening. Mademoiselle Paquerette.” 

She turned and recognized Ishmael’s friend of the other night, 
the young man whose elegant manners had been so praised by Mine. 
jMoque. She only smiled shyly by way of answer, too much en- 
grossed to speak. 

“You are listening to the quartette?” 

“ Yes. Is it not beautiful ? ” 

“ Beautiful as a steam saw. That wretched baritone’s voice is a 
mixture of trois-six and river fog. And to hear such music so mur- 
dered ! Have you never been to the opera ? ” 


AN ISHMAELITE, 141 

“Never,” said Paquerette, with wondering eyes. She did not 
even know what the word meant. 

“ Ah, you must go some night, and hear that quartette properly 
sung.” 

“What is a quartette, and what does it mean? ’’asked PSque- 
rette. 

‘ ‘ A quartette is a concerted piece sung by four voices ; and this 
peculiar quartette means — my faith, it has a whole world of meaning 
— the plot of a novel. It means love, jealousy, revenge, murder, the 
concentrated i^assion of a lifetime. And to think that you should 
hear such music for the first time in such a hole as this ! 

“ Is it a very bad place ? ” asked Paquerette, with a scared look. 

“ It is a third-rate concert-room ; but it is much better than a con- 
vent,” added Hector, as an afterthought. 

“ Is a convent so very dreadful ? ” 

“It means imprisonment for life, without having enjoyed the 
privileges of a criminal beforehand. But your friend. Monsieur 
Ishmael, has promised that he will not shut you up in a convent.” 

“ I am glad of that,” said Pitquerette. “ I would do anything he 
told me to do ; but I would much rather not go into a convent.” 

There had been a little interval after the quartette, and now 
Lisette began her comic song, and shrugged her favorite shrugs, and 
smiled her mechanical smiles, and turned herself as upon a pivot to 
right and to left, challenging admiration and applause. Paquerette 
did not, in her heart of hearts, admire this song of Lisette’s, but she 
thought that it must be pleasant to be so heartily applauded, to have 
all those faces grinning rapturously at one’s least word or look. Ig- 
norant as Paquerette was, she had an instinctive knowledge that 
popularity, the homage even of the lowest, is sweet. 

M. de Valnois walked home with Mine. Moque and her charge, 
and madame’s conversation during the whole of that walk con- 
sisted of praise of the brilliant life of a concert singer or an ac- 
tress, and in deprecation of Ishmael’s folly in forbidding Paque- 
rotte’s debut. 

“ I could launch her as no one else in Paris could launch her,” 
said Lisette. “ I can twist the director of the Palais round my little 
finger. He would do anything I asked.” 

in her eagerness to secure Valnois’ advocacy of her plan, Lisette 
invited him to supper, and' at midnight the last sprig of the De 
Valnois found himself supping men-ily enough over a pork butcher’s 
shop. After supper he heard Paquerette sing her little song, which 
she now performed with considerable chic, as to the manner born. 
Hector thought he had never seen anything daintier or more fasci- 
nating than that small pale face, with the delicately pencilled brows 
and large blue eyes, that slim, supple figure in the shabby black silk 
gown, the long swan throat rising ivory white above the low linen 
collar and cherry-colored ribbon. 

“You are right,” cried Hector ; “ she would be the rage in less 
than a month. It would be cruelty to deprive her of her chances.” 

Paquerette heard, and her little linnet’s head was bewildered with 
gratified vanity. If Lisette’s praises had flattered her, how much 


142 


Ali ISILMAELITE. 


more flattering was the praise of this young man, with his gracious 
l^resence, careless elegance of dress, and air which implied fashion, 
aristocracy — all those wonderful attributes of mankind which had 
been newly revealed to Paquerette from the discourse of Mme. Moque, 
who took it upon herself as a duty to explain the ways of civiliza- 
tion, the charms and delights of Parisian existence, the habits of 
the boulevard and the Champs Elysfe, to this poor little waif of 
Saint Antoine. 

Prom that hour Paquerette’s simplicity was a thing of the past. 
She had tasted the fruit of the fatal tree. She pined to know more. 
She was continually asking questions about the ways and ideas and 
meanings of that life which breathed and throbbed in the heart of 
that new Paris of the noble and the rich, which was as strange to 
her as El Dorado to Raleigh. And Lisette, who would have talked 
to the chairs and tables — nay, did so talk in her solitary hours — 
rather than not talk at all, was delighted to bring forth her stores of 
wisdom ; to relate her manifold experiences ; to tell of spendthrifts 
and roues who had flashed upon Paris, the brief glory of the hour, 
to crawl away to their province broken and penniless a few years 
afterward to die amidst the ashes of the ancestors they had disgraced, 
the land they had robbed ; of beauty, lax and venal, whose butterfly 
career had involved the ruin of many, had given pure delight to 
none ; of financiers, born in the gutter, who had crept by the thorny 
paths of usury, and trick, and falsehood to the very pinnacle of for- 
tune ; of speculators enriched by the toil of the million. 

Pitquerette loved to hear these stories related, with a vivacity and 
freshness of color which conjured up vivid pictures in the girl’s mind. 
She loved to walk the streets of Paris with her mentor, to look up 
at the windows behind which golden youth had gambled away 
princely fortunes ; to see beautiful women passing in carriages, 
women v hose histories she had been told. What a strange, glit- 
tering life it seemed — all flash, and fever, and dazzle — after the 
dirt, and squalor, the all-pervading dreariness of the Rue Som- 
breuil ! 

The days and weeks crept on, and although Ishmael was still 
resolutely opposed to the career of a concert-singer for his protegee, 
he had not yet made up his mind what was to be done with her. It 
was easier for him to pay Lisette ten francs a w'eek for the girl’s 
board than to devise a w^ay by wdiich Paquerette might learn to get 
her own living. She was learning something every day in the 
Moque manage, he told himself. She was beginning to be handy 
wdth her needle ; she went to market with Lisette ; she helped to 
keep the house in order ; and she now' and then served in the shop. 
She was cleverer, brisker in every w'ay since she had left Saint An- 
toine. Ishmael saw her ev^ry Sunday, on which day he either joined 
Moque and his wufe in some excursion or accepted their hosjhtality 
for a dinner. 

But all this time, in spite of Ishmael’s aversion to the stage and 
tlie concert room, Lisette went on with her training, and Paquerette 
had a singing lesson nearly every day. She had a fine ear, and soon 
learnt to pick out melodies and extemporize accompaniments on 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


143 


the wheezy old cottage piano, and promised speedily to surpass her 
niistress both in playing and singing. And she longed to be stand- 
ing on the platform with all those faces in front of her, and to hear 
the chinking of glasses and teaspoons and the thunder of applauding 
hands and feet. 

Ishmael in the meantime was not a little troubled in mind about 
this new responsibility of his. He thought of Paquerette at all times 
and seasons. He made inquiries in every likely quarter as to the 
occupations of women — artificial flower-making, dressmaking, tailor- 
ing, shoe-binding, bedding. All the answers he got seemed alike 
unsatisfactory. Every trade about which he inquired was declared 
to be the hardest, the worst, the most disreputable, the least re- 
munerative. There was work for women, yes; but not work that 
would feed them, or clothe them, or house them decently. Very 
few could contrive to live honestly on their wretched wages. Starva- 
tion, degradation, dishonor. His informants rang the changes upon 
words of dreadful meaning, and Ishmael began to despair of saving 
Paquerette from the stage or the convent. 


CHAPTEK XIX. 

“set 5IE AS A SEAL UPON THINE HEART.” 

Paquerette had been a dweller in the Rue Eranche-colline for 
nearly three months. It was springtime, and the flower markets 
were gay with primroses and daffodils and tulips. The poor had 
their woodland blooms, while for the rich the season of Parma 
violets and white camellias and lilies of the valley was in its gloiy. 
Paris was awakening from winter darkness to sunshine and blue 
skies ; and already the gummy chestnut buds were glistening in the 
gardens of the Tuileries, the nursemaids and children were rejoicing 
in the advent of spring. It was mid-Lent, and the beasts were fat- 
tening for the great slaughter of Good Friday, a day sacred every- 
where save in the abattoirs of Paris, where the brute creation is 
saciificed in readiness for the Easter festival, and for that extra good 
cheer which follows the orthodox feast. 

For nearly three months Paquerette had dwelt at peace in her new 
home. She had been decently fed, comfortably clad ; she had en- 
dured neither blows nor cursing ; and it seemed to her that she had 
lived a new life, and had become a new creature — an altogether 
complex machine in comparison with that P3,querette of the fau- 
bourg who had no care but to escape hard usage, no joy in the pres- 
ent, no hope in the future. The Paquerette of to-day was full of 
dreams and hopes, and vague expectancies and dim ambitions. She 
had been flattered and fired by Lisette and Valnois. She had been 
'taught to believe herself a genius in a small way — to believe that she 
had gifts which would bring lier gold and fame, and enable her to 
drive her carriage in the Champs Elysees, like the beautiful w'omeu 
with the strange histories whom she so fervently admired. 


144 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


She was pleased with her own voice, which gained strength and 
clearness and flexibility with every day of her life — pleased with her 
own fingers, which every day grew more familiar with the ^ keys of 
the little old piano, until they seemed to have an instinctive power 
of touching the right notes and to fall as easily into the melody as 
the song of a bird. She was pleased with her existence and its 
variety — the afternoon jaunt to the nearest j^art of the town, the 
hours spent before shop windows, gloating over splendors which, 
according to Lisette, might some day be within her reach. 

“ If you once make a success money will pour in upon you like a 
river,” said Lisette. 

Hector de Valnois had written a couple of songs on x^niTOse for 
Paquerette. They had been set by his friend of the Palais Royal 
orchestra, and one afternoon he took this gentleman to the Rue 
Franche-Colline to hear Paquerette sing. He was delighted with her 
voice and her ap2:)earance ; told her she wanted one year of severe 
training under a first-rate master, by which description he evidently 
meant himself, and that she might then make her debut at the 
Palais Royal itself. He said this with the air of a man who could 
conceive no grander arena, who knew of no higher pinnacle. To 
him the Palais Royal among theatres was as Cotopaxi among moun- 
tains. The only difference was in the degree of inaccessibility, and 
that whereas nobody ever got to the top of Cotopaxi, aitists have 
from time to time succeeded in getting engaged at the Palais Royal. 
M. de Valnois left Paris within a week of this visit. He was going 
for a ramble in his beloved Rhineland, the country in which his 
student-life had been spent — the land of music, romance, legend, 
metaphysics, which he pretended to love ever so much better than 
the soil from which his race had sprung. He locked up his apart- 
ment in the Rue Montorgueil, gave the key to the portress, took with 
him for his only luggage a very small valise, and a copy of Goethe’s 
“Faust,” and for all his resources five hundred francs, just received 
from a publisher, and he shook the dust of Paris from his feet. 
When the five hundred francs were gone he would live from hand 
to mouth, sending an article to the papers now and then, and living 
on credit at his inn till the editor sent him his pay. It was a happy- 
go-lucky life which suited his temperament, a more innocent life 
than he could live in Paris— a life under blue skies, beside blue 
waters, amid vine-clad hills — a life which regenerated him, he de- 
clared, when the white-hot fever of Paris had dried up his brains 
and his blood. 

Paquerette missed him when he was gone, though she had seen 
him but seldom. There was one person less to praise her; and his 
]U'aise had been so mucli sweeter than all other i^raises because of the 
flavor of aristocracy that hung about his person — an indescribable 
refinement of tone, and manner, and bearing which distinguished 
liim from every one else she knew. 

Nearly three months had gone since that dark, wintry morning 
when Ishmael found the fugitive of St. Antoine crouching in the 
corner of his staircase, and in that time there had been no sign or 
token of the old grandmother in the Rue Sombreuil. Whatever 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


145 


steps Mere Lemoine had taken for the recovery of her orphan grand- 
child had been harmless to Ptlqnerette. Ishmael had scrupulously 
avoided the neighborhood of the Eue Sombreuil, lest his very aj)- 
pearance there should excite suspicion. He had warned Mme. 
Morice against any hint of Paquerette’s whereabouts to the sisters 
Benoit. The only wonder was that Paquerette had not been recog- 
nized in the streets of Paris by some wanderer from the faubourg 
beyond the Place de la Bastille. Yet, on the other had, the sons 
and daughters of St. Antoine are for the most part local in their 
habits, and the boulevards and the Palais Eoyal are to them as 
another country. And again, Paquerette’s personal ap23earance had 
been so altered by Mme. Moque’s training that she might be said to 
have been imi^roved out of all semblance to her former self. Who 
would have recognized the Cinderella of the Eue Sombreuil in the 
young bourgeoise dressed in a black silk gown, a shei)herd’s ijlaid 
shawl, and neat straw bonnet and black veil ? 

The time had gone by, and Paquerette had been unassailed ; and 
now Ishmael thought the day had come when he might venture to 
reconnoitre the harridan’s hole and find out what dangers might 
wait for his jDrotegee in the future. So one evening in Holy Week, 
a clear Aj)ril twilight, he descended from the heights of Belleville 
after his day’s work was done, and entered the domain of St. 
Antoine. He did not intend to show himself to M^re Lemoine. 
He wanted to find out from the neighbors how she was living, or 
whether she had reconciled herself to the loss of her grandchild. 

The sky was golden yonder toward the barri^re de I’Btoile, but in 
these narrow slums, and amid these tall old barracks of Sainte 
Marguerite and Saint Antoine darkness was already filling the 
corners and brooding over the lower windows and lurking in the 
passages and courtyards. In the quadrangle, which had been Pa- 
querette’s playground, the shades of evening hung heavy and thick, 
and candle-light shone yellow and dim behind many of the windows 
in that stone well of humanity— windows which made patches of 
sickly light on the dark, black walls. But there was no gleam of 
light in either window of Mere Lemoine’s ground-floor. The door 
which Ishmael had always seen open was now firmly shut, and on 
going close up to it he was just able to distinguish the words “ to 
let ” scrawled with chalk upon the greasy black door. Mere Le- 
moine had removed herself and her household goods to some other 
habitation. It might be that she had found a cheaper shelter in 
some garret under the tiles above his head yonder, where the roof 
was still faintly lighted by yellow gleams from the western sky. 

Ishmael looked in at the little den of a room near the gateway, 
which served at once as habitation and point of esjiial for the porter 

and his wife. , ^ • n 

The porter was mending shoes by the light of a guttering candle, 
the iiortress was frying some cuiious portion of sheep’s anatomy with 
a laro-e admixture of onions. The reek of the onions, the tallow 
candle, the shoe-leather, the cobbler’s wax burst upon Ishmael in a 

warm gust as he opened the door. . „ it 

“ Can you tell me where to find Mademoiselle Benoit? he asked, 
in 


146 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


The portress looked at her family of keys, hanging in three rows 
on a numbered board. 

“ On the fourth story, the first door in the passage to the right. 
There must be one of them at home, for the key is gone,” she 
said. 

“ The big Lisbeth came in half an hour ago,” said the cobbler, 
without looking up from his shoe. 

The big Lisbeth. It was she who had talked to him so gravely 
about Paquerette, who had spoken of him as her admirer. He had 
some embarrassment at the idea of being taken to task once again 
by this strong-minded young woman. But he did not shirk the in- 
terview. He mounted the murky staircase, where a smoky oil lamp 
at each landing accentuated the gloom, and he knocked at the door 
to which the portress had directed him. 

“ Gome in,” cried a brisk voice, and he entered. 

The room was as neatly kept as his own. — beds shrouded by red 
and white curtains, a table laid for supper, books, fiowers, and the 
Citizen King and his queen smiling on the wall yonder, on each side 
of the little gilded shell which held holy water, decorated i^iously 
with the sprays of palm brought home from last Sunday’s service. 

And this was the apartment of girls who worked for their living. 
Why should not Paquerette so work, and so live ? 

“ Monsieur Ishmael ! ” cried Lisbeth, throwing aside her needle- 
work and going straight up to him with an intent look in her clear, 
kind eyes ; you have come to tell me about Paquerette — poor little 
Paquerette — who disappeared three months ago.” 

“ Why should you suppose that I know anything about her, ma- 
demoiselle ? ” asked Ishmael, surprised by this sudden challenge. 

“ I have made up my mind about that long ago. Either she is 
dead, or she has found a shelter somewhere with your helj). Why 
should I think so ? For this reason : upon this earth she could 
count only three friends — you, my cousins and I (who count as only 
one), and death. She must have gone to one or the other the night 
she ran awajn” 

“ You have guessed rightly,” answered Ishmael. “ She came to 
me, poor child, because she was afraid of death and afraid to go to 
you. In this house she felt she could not be secure from her grand- 
mother’s cruelty.” 

^ “ And you,” said Lisbeth, looking at him searchingly, almost im- 
ploringly ; there might be a worse cruelty practised by you — the 
cruelty of strength against weakness, cunning against innocence — 
the kind of cruelty which men have been practising against women 
ever since the world began. I know that you admired her, that she 
loved you,” continued Lisbeth i^assionately. “ If you have wronged 

I have not wronged her. I have done the best that lay in my 
power. I am here now to ask your adrice. A young woman’s des- 
tiny is not a problem so^easily solved as I once thought. As to love, 
that is all nonsense. Paquerette came to me because I was a stron'^ 
man, able to protect her and myself against an old shrew’s claws, 
and because I lived a long way fronr her grandmother’s den. For , 


AN ISmiAELITE. 


147 


choice she would rather have gone to you. And now first tell me 
about M^re Lemoine. Is she dead ? ” 

“ Not to my knowledge. She has been gone from here about six 
weeks. Her habits were abominable — she was almost always tipsy, 
or at least stupefied by drink, and her neighbors comijlained to the 
landlord that they w'ere in peril of being burnt in tiieir beds, as it 
was more than likely that she would set the house on fire some 
night. As she was very much in arrears with her rent, he did not 
stand upon ceremony. She was turned into the street and her goods 
and chattels, which she had reduced to the lowest ebb by pawning, 
were seized and sold. No one knows where she went or what be- 
came of her.” 

‘ ‘ Then it is to be hoped that this old hag will never be heard of 
again, and that Pdquerette may live the rest of her days in peace.” 

After this Ishmael told Lisbeth all that had happened since 
Paquerette’s flight, and explained his difficulties in dealing with 
such a delicate matter as a young woman’s destiny. On one side 
were Mine. Moque, Hector de Valnois, and Paquerette herself, 
urgent for a public career ; on the other the alternative seemed only 
a semi-starvation, a life wdiich, to be honest, must needs be one long 
slaveiy, ground to the dust by hard taskmasters, wedded to abject 
poverty. 

“Woman’s work is wretchedly paid in Paris, I grant,” said Lis- 
beth ; ‘ ‘ but with frugality one can manage to exist. My cousins 
and I live comfortably enough. But then there are three of us and 
we work very hard ; we have worked ever since we were old enough 
to hold our needles. Poor Paquerette has never been taught to do 
anything useful. No wonder she w’ants to get her bread by sing- 
ing.” 

“ Will you go and see her ? ” asked Ishmael ; “you might be able 
to give her some good advice.” 

“ I will go to her with all my heart. I will help her with all my 
heart, if I can,” answ'ered Lisbeth, cordially. 

And then she and Ishmael shook hands and parted. 

“Forgive me for having doubted you,” she said, on the threshold 
of her door. “ We w^omen have been so badly treated for genera- 
tion after generation, that w^e have leai-nt to look upon man as our 
natural enemy.” 

Feeling himself safe now in pursuing his inquiries about Mere 
Lemoine, Ishmael questioned the porter, who told him that the old 
W’oman had been seen on the outskirts of Paris, bent nearly double 
under a ragpicker’s basket, and that it was supposed she had mi- 
grated to a settlement on the Boulevard de la Kevolte, near Olichy, 
a kind of fastness of the dangerous classes known as the CitS du So- 
leil, and chiefly inhabited by ragjnckers. 

Lisbeth went to the Kue Franche-colline on the following evening 
after her w^ork. It was the eve of Good Friday, and there w’as no 
performance at the Palais de Cristal ; so Mine. Moque and her pu- 
pil were both at home in the little yellow-curtained salon, wdiile M. 
Moque w'as busy below. 

The two w’omen w'ere engaged in the manufacture of a bonnet for 


148 


AN mUMAELITE. 


Paquerette, a new bonnet made out of the jetsam and flotsam of 
Lisette’s old days of service, which had left her a store of silks and 
ribbons, laces and splendid scraps, hoarded in old trunks and port- 
manteaux. Paquerette was to appear in a new bonnet on Easter 
Sunday, when they were to go to Vincennes for the afternoon with 
Ishmael. Perhaps there would be dancing, as- on that other Sun- 
day which marked the beginning of Puquerette’s womanhood. 

The girl dropped her work and flew to Lisbeth’s arms. She w'as 
scarcely taken by surprise, as Ishmael had called in the afternoon to 
tell her of his visit to the Rue Sombreuil. 

“ My heart,” she exclaimed ; “ how glad I am to see you again ! ” 
Lisbeth kissed her heartily, and then held her at arms’ length for a 
minute or so, scrutinizing her gravely, severely even. 

“ And so am I glad to see you, my dear, but if we had met in the 
street I should hardly have known you. I never saw such a change 
in any one.” 

“ For the better, I hoj)e ! ” said Lisette, wdiisking up a bit of blue 
silk, and giving her needle and thread a vindictive jerk. 

She was not overpleased at Lisbeth’s visit, regarding her as an 
interloper, likely to side with Ishmael, and to give troublesome ad- 
vice. 

“ I suppose most people would call the change for the better,” 
answered Lisbeth with her uncompromising candor; “but I don’t 
like to see my little Paquerette look such a demoiselle. She has to 
work for her living, x>oor child ; and it’s a pity to look above one’s 
station.” 

“ Happily no one will ever accuse you of that,” replied Lisette. 
“ As for Mademoiselle Paquerette, it is so much the better for her 
that she has a little air of a born lady, which only wanted to be de- 
veloped by a clever friend. And as for getting her living, by and 
by ; there is work and work ; and my little friend here has it in her 
power to make her fortune if she likes, without soiling the tips of 
her fingers.” 

And then Mme. Moque held forth upon the folly of Paquerette’s 
friend, M. Ishmael, who wanted to deprive her of a noble career. 

Paquerette began to feel uncomfortable on perceiving that her 
old and her new friend were not likely to get on very well together. 
She asked affectionately after Pauline and Antoinette, and hoped she 
should see them soon. 

“ We are going to Vincennes on Sunday,” she said. “ There is to 
be a fair. Monsieur Moque says. How I wish you could all come 
with us, or meet us there ! You would not mind, would you, 
Madame Moque ? ” 

Lisette declared that nothing could l)e more blissful than such an 
addition to the paidy, and Lisbeth accepted the invitation. Tli^’e 
would be no overpowering burden of obligation. The entertainment 
would be a kind of picnic, in which everybody would pay his or her 
share. 

Sunday came— Easter Sunday — and the early Masses in the grand 
old Paris churches were glorified by sunlight streaming through 
painted glass, and the sky above the white, beautiful city, the broad. 


AN I8IIMAELITE. 


140 


winding river, was like a summer heaven, blue and cloudless. 
Islimael rose soon after dawn and walked to the city to hear Mass in 
Notre-Dame. He wore a frock-coat now on Sundays, and on week- 
day evenings when he had occasion to leave the workmen’s quarter ; 
and he wore his coat with an easy air, which made him altogether 
different from his fellow-workm.en in their Sunday clothes. With 
him the blouse was an accident, the coat an old habit. Peoj^le 
turned and looked at him in tlie streets, so superior was that tall 
figure, with the broad chest and herculean shoulders, and the kingly 
carriage of the head, to the effeminate and fine-drawn form of the 
typical Parisian. The son of the sea and the sand marshes yonder, 
reared in sunlight and wind, storm and rain, was of another breed 
from the townsman, born of long generations of townsmen. 

After Mass Ishmael breakfasted near the cathedral, and then set 
out to walk to Vincennes, where, just in that spot on which he and 
Paquerette had met for the first time nearly a year ago, he found 
her to-day, with M. and Mine. Moque — animated, smiling, blushing 
in her new bonnet, trimmed with broad straw-colored ribbon, and 
blue cornflowers nestling against her pale brown hair. 

She was quite a different creature from the Paquerette of last 
year, in her borrowed cotton frock and little grisette cap. Then she 
had looked a shy, simple child, to whom everything in life was new 
and strange. To-day she was a woman, in the glory of early woman- 
hood, conscious of her power ta charm, looking at Ishmael shyly 
still, with those liquid blue eyes ; but the clear brightness of those 
beautiful eyes told a new story. Paquerette had acquired the rudi- 
ments of coquetry. 

M. Moque had brought a couple of commercial friends, from the 
Rue Franche-colline, and Mme. Moque had invited the soprano from 
the Palais de Cristal, with her husband, the baritone, the Rigoletto, 
the Figaro, who had sung in Italian opera for one brief season at 
Bordeaux, about fifteen years before, and who never forgot those 
early triumphs on the lyric stage. The Benoit girls were punctual, 
and with their arrival the party was complete. 

The wood was crowded with holiday people. There was a fair 
going on in the Cours de Vincennes, the great broad highway be- 
yond the barriere du Trone, and toward this festival they bent their 
way, soon after their picnic luncheon, guided by the blare of trum- 
pets, the roll of drums, the clamor of thousands of voices. It was 
the gingerbread fair ; such a crowd of joyous humanity — such a 
crowd as Paquerette had never beheld before to-day. She clung to 
IsLinael’s arm as they entered the great wide boulevard of booths, 
amid the din of trumpets, fiddles, and concertinas, pandean pipes, 
cymbals, and drums, bell-ringing, women laughing — amid the ruck 
of braziers on which men and women were frying sausages, fritters, 
fish — amid the clash of words and the trampling of horses, and 
above every other sound in the fair the roar of a vociferous multi- 
tude, rising and falling with a hoarse and sonorous cadence, like the 
rolling breakers of a stormy sea. 

Paquerette gazed in bewilderment at the shows, the wild beasts, 
conjurers, giants, dwarfs, swings, merry-go-rounds. There were 


150 


AN I8HMAELITE. 


sliooting galleries witlioufc number, learned dogs, phenomenal chil- 
dren, acrobats, coboa merchants with their tin fountains, hawkers 
of every description, street musicians of every order. On such a 
day as this it was not easy to get away from the crowd, nor were 
Ishmael’s companions by any means eager for solitude while the at- 
tractions of the fair were still fresh and dazzling. It was the first 
fair that Paquerette had ever seen. The circus riders, the acrobats, 
the clowns, the learned j^igs were all new to her. She clasped her 
hands and opened her eyes wide with rapture at every fresh figure 
in the vast lialeidoscope of moving, joyous humanity. For her 
all the joy was real ; the painted faces were beautiful ; the tawdry 
muslin and gilt paper, the si:)angles and gaudy colors, were things to 
charm and dazzle. 

Ishmael, who had seen a good many such sights in his year of 
Paris life, was interested and amused by the girl’s i^leasure. Ho 
took her into the booths and circuses, to see the amazons fljdng 
through 23aper hoops, the conjurers changing pocket-handkerchiefs 
into live rabbits, boiling pigeons alive, and bringing them out of the 
sauceiran unharmed by as much as the rumpling of a feather. He 
stood by i^atiently, while gypsies told her fortune, assuring her that 
there was a tall dark man with a good heart toward her. He bought 
her gingerbread and bonbons, fairings of all kinds. He let her 
drink the cup of x^leasure to the dregs, and then, when all the won- 
ders of the show had been exhausted, when the roar of voices began 
to have a hoarse and hollow sound, when the clash of brass and the 
clang of strident laughter waxed discordant, they two wandered to- 
gether away from the broad highway and its avenue of j^ainted booths 
into the outskirts of the wood of Saint Maude — not a very lonely sjiot, 
for there were other wanderers, arm-in-arm, at every Him, couples 
who looked like lovers — here and there a happy pair, as if unconscious 
of an external ivorld, with girlish w’aist encircled by manly arm, 
grisette’s neat little cap reclining on blouse’s shoulder. 

“You must be tired. I’m afraid,” said Ishmael ; “it has been a 
long afternoon.” 

The sun was setting yonder behind -western Paris ; the dust-laden 
atmosphere above the fair was full of yellow light, against which 
golden haze the naphtha lamps of the booths began to show red and 
angry, like the bleared eyes of a drunkard — earthy, sensual, as com- 
pared with that heavenly radiance that touched all things with beauty. 

“ Tired ! Not the least in the world. I never had such a happy 
day,” answered Paquerette, with her sweet, joyous voice, that voice 
which in speech or song had ever tlie same bird-like trill. “ And to 
think that you would like to shut me up in a convent, to bury me in 
a big stony prison, from which I should never get so much as a i^eej) 
at such a scene as this.” 

It was the first time she had ever thus challenged him — the first 
time that they two, together and alone, had argued the question of 
her destiny. 

“ Don’t say that I would like to shut you in a convent, Paque- 
rette,” replied Ishmael, gravely reproachful. “ I should like to do 
what is best for your own happiness here and hereafter. ” 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


151 


The girl shrugged her shoulders and made a wry face at that word 
hereafter. The world which it represented was such a long way off. 
Why should one be troubled about it ? People shut themselves up 
in convents for the sake of that hereafter. It was for that they rose 
at untimely hours, and went to hear masses in the bleak early morn- 
ing. It was for that they deprived themselves of all manner of 
pleasures. The very idea was a bugbear. 

“ Why should I not be a singer? Why should I not be an act- 
ress ? ” urged Paquerette. “ That would be best for my happiness ; 
that would make me quite happy. Yes, even if I never rose any 
higher than that girl we heard singing in the booth just now ; and I 
am sure I can sing better than she does.” 

“Do you think that her life is a hai:>py one, Paquerette? My 
poor child, you don’t know what you are talking about. Those 
poor creatures, whose red lips are one perpetual smile, load an exist- 
ence as wretched as ever yours was in the Eue Sombreuil. They 
have to endure toil, scanty fare, miserable lodgings, hard weather, 
\ulest language, blows even.” 

“ I would rather lead such a life than go into a convent,” Paque- 
rette murmured, doggedly. 

“You shall not go into a convent. I told Mme. Moque weeks 
ago that I would not persuade you even to try the convent life 
against j'our will.” 

“ Then why not let me be a singer ? I am a burden to you now, 
useless, costing you money every week. Let me be a singer and I 
shall earn my own living. Madame Moque says I shall make a fort- 
une — Monsieur de Yalnois said so — and his friend at the Palais 
Royal. They must know. And it is such a pleasure to me to sing. 
To win a fortune like that, without hard work, just by doing the 
thing which one likes best in the whole world — think how delight- 
ful that must be ! And you deprive me of that happiness.” 

She looked up at him pleadingly, piteously, her large blue eyes 
brimming over with tears. She wounded him to the quick by her 
reiu'oaches, half-petulant, half-pitiful. Never had she been lovelier 
in his sight than she was at this moment, leaning ujpon his arm— a 
slender, willowy figure — a fragile, exquisite, useless thing— like 
some lovely parasite hanging from a branch of a grand old ceiba-ti>ee 
in the depths of a Guatemalan forest. Tears, too, in those pathetic 
eyes ; the first reproachful tears that a woman had ever shed for any 
, act of his. 

“My child, my heart,” he murmured tenderly, “you must know 
that I have no authority over you, no power to forbid or deny you 
anything. If you must be a stage-singer — a mountebank to be ap- 
plauded by a gaping crowd — to have coarse things said about you, 
vile looks gloating on your beauty ; ah, j^’ou don’t know, child, you 
can’t understand. If your lieart is set on such a life I have no 
power to stop you, only if, on the other hand, you have any regard 
for me, I beg, I implore you to avoid such a life as you would shrink 
from a pestilence, fever, death. No, you shall not be shut in a con- 
vent, my treasure. That would be a kind of murder, like catching 
a butterfly with the bloom on its wings and shutting it between the 


152 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


leaves of a great heavy book. No, you shall not work for your liv- 
ing. I will work for you, I will cherish you. Be my wife, Paque- 
rette, my love and delight, the joy of all my days, the gloiy of my 
life. The fortune shall be made, sweet one ; but these strong arms 
of mine shall toil for it. Be my wife, Paquerette.” 

He had his arm round her, he drew her to his breast in the dying 
light, they two alone in the twilight in an avenue of budding limes. 
He held her close to his loudly -beating heart, looking down at her 
with passionate eyes that had a i^ower stronger than any vanities or 
fancies of hers. She felt like a caught bird, yet with a blissful sense 
of all-pervading love and protection, courage and manhood guarding 
and cherishing her, which made captmty very sweet. 

She gave him back his kiss with a faint, languorous sigh. 

“Does that mean yes, Paquerette ?” he asked, looking tenderly 
down at the fair girlish face. 

“It means whatever you like,” she answered softly; “you are 
the master.” 

And this ended, for a while at least, the difficult question of 
Paquerette’s destiny. 


CHAPTER XX. 

“behold, thou art fair, my love.” 

The enigma of Paquerette’s destiny was solved ; there was no more 
difficulty, no more doubt or incertitude. She was to be married to 
Ishmael, otherwise Sebastian Caradec, as soon as the law would 
allow. 

Now, the marriage law of France is strictly paternal, and has been 
conceived with a strong feeling for the authority of parents, the 
safe-keeping of children. A girl in her teens and a youth under 
five-and-twenty can hardly make a foolish maniage ; for in order to 
be married at all he or she must first obtain the consent of the par- 
ents, or of the one survmng parent, or in the case of an orphan, of 
that next of kin standing in the place of a parent. The law is a hard 
one sometimes for youth and true love, as in case of poor little Cri- 
quette, in Monsieur Ludovic Halevy’s tender story; but it often 
works for the protection of sweet sixteen, who cannot elope with her , 
groom, to be bound hard and fast in the bonds of matrimony at the 
nearest registry, and for the impetuous youth at the university or 
the military depot, who cannot mate himself for life with the first 
pretty milliner he meets. Marriage in France is set round with a 
perfect cheveaux de frise of precautions and difficulties ; it cannot be 
huddled over in a hole-and-corner manner, without giving age and 
wisdom a chance of warning or remonstrance. Up to the age of 
thirty the intending bridegroom must respectfully call upon his par- 
ents to approve of his act, and must give them ample time in which 
to say their say upon the subject. 

Before he lay down to rest on the night of Easter Sunday Ishmael 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


153 


wrote a long letter to Father Bressant, telling him what had hap- 
pened, and begged him to obtain Raymond Caradec’s consent to his 
marriage. 

“I am earning my own living, with daily improving prospects,” 
he wrote. “ I am never very likely to cross my father’s path in life ; 
I pledge myself never to ask pecuniary aid from him. I call upon 
him, therefore, not to thwart me in this most solemn act of my life, 
an act which involves the happiness and welfare of another.” 

And then he went on to describe Paquerette as an orphan — help- 
less, friendless, childlike, innocent. He was careful to say nothing 
about the lowness of her origin, but dwelt chiefly on her graces, on 
her solitary condition. It was a letter eminently calculated to touch 
the good priest’s heart ; but the effect which such an appeal might 
exercise upon Raymond Caradec remained an open question. It is 
difficult to foresee the conduct of a man who has given uj) his life 
to the governance of a weak and selfish woman. 

Father Bressant’s reply came by return of post. It Tvas brief but 
full of kindness, and the envelope inclosed the following letter from 
Ishmael’s faiher : “I am told, Sebastian, that having taken your 
own course in life, without respect for me, for your name and 
family, or for the rank in which you w^ere born, you now desire to 
marry an obscure and penniless orphan, whose very name you shrink 
from disclosing. This desire on your part I can only regard as the 
natural sequel of your rebellion and ingratitude. The runaway son 
finds his helpmeet naturally among the waifs and strays of society. 
If I had any hope that the severed tie between father and son could 
ever again be reunited I should resolutely refuse my consent to such 
a union ; but as in every act of your life I recognize the influence of 
that tainted blood which makes you worse than a stranger 'to me, 
and I feel the impossibility of reconciliation, I am inclined to let 
you have your own way ; but only on the condition that you never 
resume the name of Caradec, which I am told you abandoned on 
leaving your home, and that you renounce your portion of the estate 
which I have to leave to my sons. That estate divided by three 
would be small to significance ; for two it will be little better than 
a pittance. Since, as I understand, you are earning more than you 
can spend, and see your way to an increasing income, it can be a 
very small sacrifice to you to surrender your claim upon this modest 
heritage, for the profit of your two younger brothers, for whom you, 
as I believe, once entertained a warm affection. In a word, this is 
my ultimatum : Send me a formal renunciation of your claim upon 
my estate, and I will send you my formal consent to your marriage 
with the young person whose name I have yet to learn.” 

Ishmael smiled a bitter smile as he read the paternal letter. 

“Monsieur de Caradec knows how to make a bargain,” he said 
to himself ; “ but he is right in thinking that it will cost me very 
little to give up my birthright. I will let it go as lightly af Esau 
parted with his, and I will shed no idle tears afterward for the loss 
of it. I once loved my brothers ? Yes, and with me once means 

forever.” . 

He answered his father’s letter two days aftenv^ard, inclosing a 


154 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


document which he had executed with all due formality in a notary’s 
office. 

“I renounce the name which I have long ceased to hear,” he 
wrote ; “I formally surrender a heritage on which I have never cal- 
culated. I began life a year and a half ago with no capital but a 
strong arm and a strong will. My affection for my brothers is not 
a thing of the j)ast, it belongs to the present and to the future ; and 
if ever the day come that they need my help, they will find that 
fraternal love is something more than a jffirase. I willingly, un- 
grudgingly forego whatever right I have upon your proj^erty for the 
benefit of those two dear boys ; and I am, even in severance, your 
dutiful son, Sebastian.” 

On Paquerette’s side there were difficulties, but these were more 
easily overcome. Mere Lemoine was bound to her by no legal tie, 
but M^re Lemoine had brought her up, and the law recognized the 
claim of a putative grandmother who had given food and shelter 
from infancy upward to a nameless grandchild. But Mere Lemoine 
had disappeared, and, taking her habits into due consideration, had 
in all probability gone to people the tranchee gratuity. ^It was held 
therefore, after due inquiry and some delay, that the banns of mar- 
riage might be put up, and that, after a certain interval, Ishmael 
and Puquerette might be united by civil and ecclesiastical ordi- 
nances, as they might themselves ordain. 

These considerations and preliminaries occupied nearly three 
months, during which time Ishmael was working hard and gaining 
ground with his emj)loyers, while Puquerette, still a lodger over the 
pork-butcher’s shop, seemed to be very happy. She had a good 
deal to do for Mme. Moque, who was clever in saving herself trouble 
when a' pair of younger hands and feet were at her disposition. She 
had also to prepare her trousseau, bought with a little sum of money 
given her by Ishmael, and this involved much plain sewing ; at 
which Puquerette was not particularly expert, although she had 
made considerable progress since those early days when Lisbeth 
Benoit taught her to mend her gown and made her a present of a 
thimble. 

For recreation, for delight, she had the wheezy little piano, and 
never did a Mme. Pleyel or a Liszt derive more rapture from the 
chef-d’oeuvre of an Erard or a Kreglstein than wafted Puquerette's 
young soul skyward upon the cracked and tinny tones of that little 
worn-out cottage. Her own voice ripened and strengthened with 
every week of her life. It was no longer to be spoken df as that 
Iietit brin de voix which might be just enough for a babyfied patois 
song. It was now a pure and fine soprano, and Puquerette could 
sing Gilda’s part in the great Eigoletto quartette with a force and 
liassion that startled her instructress. 

“ You ought to come out at the opera,” said Lisette. It is a sin 
for you to marry. Artists should never marry. Marriage is almost 
as bad^for a genius as a convent. It means self-sacrifice for life.” 

“ But you married,” argued Puquerette, who saw no reason why 
she should not many Ishmael first — that good Ishmael who was so 
kind to her — and go on the operatic stage afterward. 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


155 


“I married before I was secure of my position as an artist,” an- 
swered Lisette, ‘ ‘ and I have repented my weakness ever since. 
Moque is a good fellow, but lie is a clog. I should have been at one 
of the boulevard theatres years ago if I had remained single.” 

Mme. Moque was the only person who did not cordially approve 
of Paquerette’s betrothal to Ishmael. She jiraised Ishmael’s gener- 
osity in wedding the nameless waif; but she bewailed the waif's 
sacrifice of an artistic career, a career which, managed and directed 
by her, must needs have been triumphant. Ishmael might have 
made a much better marriage, she urged. Paquerette would have 
been happier single. But in these o]Dinious Mme. Moque was stren- 
uously opposed by the three Benoit girls, who came by turns to see 
Paquerette, who helped in the i^reparation of the trousseau, and 
who were never tired of praising Ishmael and congratulating their 
little friend upon her good fortune. 

“If heaven would send me such a man,” said Pauline, uncon- 
sciously quoting Shakespeare. 

Ishmael had made all his arrangements for his wedded life. He 
had descended from his eyry under the tiles to a comfortable and 
comparatively spacious apartment on the second floor, consisting of 
a salon, bedroom, and kitchen, with a little fourth room — a mere 
closet, with a narrow window commanding a back lane, which would 
do for his study. Paquerette and he, accompanied by Lisette, had 
made numerous voyages of discovery among the second-hand dealers 
of Paris, and had brought home treasure in the shape of chairs, 
tables, and armoires made under the First Empire, in that pseudo- 
classical style of art which has so long been a drag in the market. 
Ishmael, with his discriminating eye for form and mechanism, was 
the last person to be contented with cheap and newly made furni- 
ture, all trick and varnish and green wood. He wandered from 
broker to broker, till his glance lighted on some fine old piece of 
furniture wheeled into a corner, rejected by the frivolous, scorned 
by tlie .fashionable, but as solid in its construction and as true in 
its lines as an old wooden man-of-war. And thus for a few hundred 
francs he secured a few choice old pieces of cabinet work which 
gave his little salon a look of sombre grandeur. It in nowise re- 
sembled the prosi3erous workman’s sitting-room. It had the air of 
a quiet scholar’s study, a retired diplomatist’s sanctum. Lisette 
shrugged her shoulders, and said that the room was triste. 

“ You must have yellow curtains like mine,” she protested, “or 
your salon will be the gloomiest in all Paris.” 

But Ishmael resolved that he would not have the yellow curtains, 
least of all yellow curtains like Lisette’s. He and Paquerette took 
their summer evenings’ rambles in all the faubourgs of Paris, and 
one night, not very remote from the dome of Sainte Genevieve, 
Ishmael found some old tapestry curtains in a shabby little bric-a- 
brac shop, which he felt were the things he wanted for his sitting- 
room. Paquerette at first condemned them as dingy ; but on their 
merits being explained to her, and on her being told that they ex- 
actly resembled some curtains which Ishmael had seen in a chateau 
in Brittany, she began to think better of them. Her education in 


156 


AN ISnMAELITE. 


the little yellow salon over the pork -butcher’s shop was not without 
fruits. She was beginning to have grand ideas, vague yearnings for 
splendor and finery, a dim fancy that Nature had intended her to be 
a lady. 

At last, in the golden days of early June, while the white flowers 
of the chestnut trees in the Tuileries gardens were falling in feath- 
ery showers upon the grass, like snow in summer, when the haw- 
thorns were still in bloom in the bois, and the delicate fragrance of 
acacias glorified the air of the suburbs, came the morning of Paque- 
rette’s wedding-day. It was a Saturday, favorite day for humble 
weddings, since it leaves the interval of Sunday for the bridal party j 
to take their pleasure before bridegroom and bride go back to the 
daily round of toil. Lisette had suggested Saturday, and Ishmael • 
had obeyed. Lisette had further suggested a wedding dinner in the 
Palais Eoyal on Saturday evening, and a jaunt to Bougival, with a 
picnic by the waterside, on Sunday. But here, to the lady’s disap- 
l^ointment, Ishmael announced that he had plans of his own. He 
had obtained leave of absence for the Monday and Tuesday after his 
wedding, and he meant to take Paquerette on a little excursion to 
the woods of Marly and St. Germain, and then on to Fontainebleau, 
travelling by diligence as far as possible, so as to see the most they 
could of the country, taking their valise with them and stopxung at 
humble inns on the road. 

“ Paquerette adores the woods,” he said. “ I have never forgot- 
ten how enchanted she was with the flowers and butterflies at Marly 
last year. I want to renew that exjperience.” 

Lisette smiled a bitter smile. 

“Experiences of that kind are not so easily repeated,” she said. 

‘ ‘ I don’t think Paquerette cares very much about flowers and but- 
terflies now she has seen the fashionable faubourgs of Paris.” 

“ Instead of a wedding-dinner next Saturday, I shall ask you and 
Moque and other friends to dine with us the Sunday after our return, 
and then you will be able to judge what kind of housekeej^er Pdque- 
rette will make,” pursued Ishmael, without noticing Mme. Moque’s 
interruption. 

The marriage thus arranged was conducted very quietly. "'The 
only guests were the three Benoit girls, M. and Mme. Moque, and a 
fellow-workman of Ishmael’s, an esprit fort and orator of the clubs, ' 
who acted as best man. The mairie on this sunlit Saturday morning 
was a nest of bridal j^arties, fathers and mothers, sisters and broth- 
ers, from youth to infancy, all in new clothes, washed, frizzed, 
pomaded for the occasion. The maire with his tricolored star and 
little red morocco book, the greffier with his big register, had a for- 
midable air, and the little crowd rose en masse at the entrance of 
these authorities. Then came solemn questions, bridegrooms and 
brides were each addressed by name, and formally interrogated ; 
fathers and mothers present were questioned as to their consent to • 
each union, the answers to be clearly and loudly given, so as to be 
heard by all lU'esent, which in most cases they were not. The 
greffier read certain articles of the civil code, setting forth the duties 
and rights of husband and wife— all this being done W’ith the sum- 


AN ISTIMAELITE. 


15Y 


mer wind blowing freely through wide open doors, to show that the 
ceremony is a public act ; and then the maire declared these per- 
sons united in marriage, the registers were signed, the ceremonial 
w^as finished. 

“Remember the poor, if you please,” cried one of the officials, 
and each as he or she went by dropped an offering into a bag upon 
the table. Very microscopic some of these offerings ; but tliey are 
many of them verily like the widow’s mite, the gift of those who 
have but little to give. 

Ishmael was too good a Catholic to dispense with the blessing of 
the church on this solemn sacramental act of his life. Within half 
an hour after leaving the mairie Paquerette and he were kneeling be-» 
fore the high altar in a shadowy old church on the edge of the 
eleventh arrondissement, and in the parish in which Ishmael had his 
domicile. AVhen this solemnity was accomplished the bridal party 
repaired to a small and quiet little restaurant near Mme. Morice’s 
shop, where the grocer and his wife met them, and where a comfort- 
able breakfast had been ordered for the party. And here, at two 
o’clock, Paquerette and her husband bade their friends adieu, and 
started with their modest baggage in a fly for the office of the dili- 
gence, which still plied between Paris and Marly le Roi. They were 
to begin their wedded life in the little inn with the garden where 
they had dined last fSt. John’s Day. 


CHAPTER XXI. 

“and it bkought fokth wild gkapes.” 

Nearly two years had gone by since that wedding morning at the 
mairie. It was the springtide of 1854, and Ishmael and Paquerette 
had lived together through the sunshine and the cloud of a married 
life which seemed somewhat long to look back upon in the minds of 
both. It had been a^period of joy and sorrow— of joy, for Paque- 
rette had found it a sweet and happy fate to be the beloved of 
an honest and noble-minded husband ; of sorrow, for the first-fruits 
of their love had been garnered yonder in the field of many graves. 
Paquerette could see the multitude of headstones, the Egyptian sar- 
cophaguses. and Greek temples, white and ghostly on the slope of 
the hill, when she looked out of her bedroom window on moonlit 
nights ; and she fancied she could see the very spot where her baby 
girl lay, under a little garden of flowers. For many months of 
Puquerette’s life she never w^ent to bed without looking out of that 
window, and toward that grave, while she murmured a prayer for 
her dead. Not a week passed in which she did not make her pious 
pilgrimage to the cemetery and spend an hour beside her baby’s 
grave. Hers were the hands that kept the flowers in order in that 
tiny garden, among so many other such gardens, some tawdiy, some 
fine in the overcrowded city of the dead. Ishmael had bought the 
concession peii^ctuelle of this little plot of ground. The leasehold, 


158 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


which suffices for middle-class Paris in a general way, was not last- 
ing enough for his and Paquerette’s sorrow for the fair flower that 
had withered in its earliest bloom. They wanted to be sure that no 
lapse of years would make any difference to that little bed. 

The first year of Paquerette’s married life had been perfectly 
hai^py. First there had been the delight, the pride, the importance 
of being mistress of her little menage, her salon with its fine old 
furniture and tapestiy curtains, her own piano — Ishmael’s wedding 
gift, and a gift far beyond his means at that period — a new piano, 
with a full, rich tone, which w^as as the organ of St. Eustache in com- 
parison Avith the Avorn-out tin kettle upon which Lisette accom- 
panied her nasal melodies. Paquerette adored her piano, and, at 
Ishmael’s suggestion, she took music-lessons from a little old pro- 
fessor whose father had helped Jean Jacques Kousseau in the parti- 
tion of his operettas, and had j)layed the Auolin in the little theatre 
at Versailles where Marie Antoinette acted. The i^rofessor Avas a 
frail old link with the historic i3ast, faded and withered and snuffy, 
very proud of relating those souvenirs of the gracious days before the 
Eevolution Avhich his father had bequeathed to him as his only heri- 
tage. He had discoursed of these things so often that he had come 
almost to confound his father’s personality with his own, and to 
talk as if it were he who had been in the orchestra w’hen the queen 
sang, as if he had been a collaborateur of that wonderful Jean 
Jacques. 

“I can see it all as I tell you the story,” he would say; “the 
place, the people, they are all before me, vivid, real. I knew them 
all so Avell, you see.” 

Ishmael had a fancy for the little old man, who had the refine- 
ment and somewhat over accentuated courtesy of those long-departed 
days, an air of impalpable poAvder, inAusible patches, and ingeon 
Avings. He asked him to dinner sometimes on a Avinter Sunday, and 
let him tell his stories all the evening. The professor was Legitimist 
to the tips of his nails, and held the house of Orleans and the house 
of Bonaparte in equal contempt. 

“ Charlatans both,” he said, “ only one is cleverer than the other. 
He is not afraid of spending money, as the Citizen King AA^as, and he 
knows how to make Paris comfortable for the Parisians. And, since 
to govern Paris is to govern France, he is likely to reign long and 
merrily.” 

For music M. Vielbois, the little old professor, gaA^e Pitquerette 
only the Avorks of the eighteenth century composers — quaint old 
melodies by Ptameau, Lulli, Gretry, Monsigny— gavottes, minuets, 
ballet music of the old, old school. These prettinesses, which did 
not require much execution, Paquerette played charmingly, with 
airy lightness, AAuth delicate shades of expression, with perfect 
phrasing. 

“ She has the finest ear of any pupil I eA'er taught,” protested M. 
Vielbois, “ and she has a voice that Avould have made her fortune 
on the o^Deratic stage.” 

That suggestion of the “ might have been ” always evoked a sigh 
from Paquerette. She thought of that possible operatic career — 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


159 


those visionary successes and triumphs — as of a treasure she had 
sacrificed in order to marry Ishmael. He was very good to her. 
He did all he could to make her life happy, and she told herself that 
she was happy ; hut that other life shone upon her fancy somewhere 
in cloudland like a dream of bliss. 

In the summer of 1853 Paquerette’s baby was born, a lovely in- 
fant, with eyes that had a heavenly look which gave the father a 
thrill of fear as he bent over the cradle. Such a look was fitter for 
the skies than this dull earth — it seemed like a warning. The child 
lived for six months, and was the delight of the little home. Pa- 
querette nursed her baby, idolized her, but treated her a little too 
much as a child treats her doll, and had intervals of carelessness in 
the micjst of her devotion. One such interval occurred in the win- 
ter when the snow was on the roofs of Menilmontant, and the -graven 
in P6re-la- Chaise were hidden under one great white i3all. M. Viel- 
bois brought his pupil tickets for the opera when the houses were 
thin on account of the hard weather. And Paquerette, flurried and 
feverish all day in anticipation of the evening’s bliss, hurried ofi’ to 
the Rue Lepelletier at night with one of the Benoit girls, leaving the 
baby in her cradle to the chance ministrations of a friendly neigh- 
bor on the third floor. 

One such night the little one caught cold — a mere nothing — a ba- 
by ailment — a touch of fever, the apothecary said, which a powder 
and a tisane would set right. But before Paris and the world was 
twenty-four houi’S older the fever was a raging fever, the delicate 
little frame was attacked with mortal disease ; and within a week 
the little coffin was being made, and the cradle was a piece of still- 
ness, shrouded under white cambric. 

Paquerette grieved intensely — lamented passionately — would not 
be comforted. ’When spring "flowers and sunshine came back to the 
land Ishmael sent her to Fontainebleau with one of the Benoit girls, 
hoping that change of air ’and scene would restore her to peace of 
mind and give her the healthful sleep which had forsaken her pilloAV 
since the child’s death. The change did something and time did 
more ; and now the year was growing old which had been a new 
year while the earth was fresh above baby Claire’s grave. Ishmael 
had named the child Claire, after his father’s mother, whom he had 
only known as a tradition. He shrunk from calling her by his own 
mother’s name. It would have seemed an evil omen. 

Paquerette was not a good housekeeper. She was impulsive, a 
creature of whim and fancy, doing things by fits and starts, some- 
times working tremendously, sometimes abandoning herself to idle- 
ness for days together. 

Ishmael was at his work all day, and asked no troublesome ques- 
tions when he came home in the evening, so long as Paquerette was 
there to receive him. He was careless as to what he ate, and took a 
good or a bad dinner with equable indifference. Sometimes the 
dinner was a cold collation, sometimes fetched hurriedly from the 
charcutier’s at the last moment, Paquerette ha^'ing forgotten the 
dinner question altogether. Sometimes there was a decent pot-au- 
feu. 


160 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


She employed a charwoman, the deaf old portress who kept the 
door below, who came to the second floor every morning to do all 
the rough work, so th^ Puqnerette’s hands were never coarsened 
by domestic drudgery. Her husband admired those pretty white 
hands. 

“ You must have good blood in your veins,” he said ; “you have 
the hands and feet of a patrician.” 

Paquerette gave her head a little toss. 

“ I have a conviction that my father was a gentleman,” she said, 
“ and that was why he would not own me.” 

‘ ‘ If he was alive and knew of your existence and abandoned you 
to that den yonder, he was a scoundrel, W'hatever his birth might 
be,” answered Ishmael, warmly. 

He had a knack of calling things by their right names. 

“Ah! you don’t know; he may have been some .great person, 
hemmed round by difficulties — a tyrannic father, a proud mother. 
Who knows ? ” 

Paquerette had read plenty of novels in her long hours of leisure, 
the novels of the day — George Sand, Feydeau, Sue, Dumas, father 
and son. Her little head was stuffed with the romantic and impos- 
sible side of life. She despised Ishmael’s dry-as-dust studies, far 
away from the flowery fields of sentiment and poetry. So different 
from his friend. Hector de Valnois, lately returned to Paris, and full 
of interest in Paquerette, whom he had found wondrously improved 
and refined by an education which had consisted for the most part 
of m sic lessons and novel reading. Paquerette was fascinated with 
his s} apathetic nature, his delightful way of looking at everything 
from til ' standpoint of art and beauty. She knew that her husband 
was clever, but his was a kind of cleverness upon which she set no 
value— a cleverness which made bridges, and built markets and 
slaughter-houses, and drained cities through loathsome subterrane- 
ous sewers. What was such talent as this comjDared with the genius 
which could extemporize a song, words and music, and sing it 
divinely en passant — which could embody jest and fancy with the 
delicate lines of an airy pencil ? Wit, mirth, art, comedy, tragedy, 
music, song, w^ere all within the domain of Hector de Valnois, while 
Ishmael was distinguished only by an inordinate passion for hard 
work, a love of sheer drudgery, which seemed almost a mania. 

What society could such a husband afibrd to a young wife, eager 
for new pleasures, now that the anguish of a first grief was a pain 
of the past, a sad, thrilling memory ? Ishmael grudged his wife no 
indulgence, thwarted her in no whim. But he could rarely share 
her pleasures. His days were full of toil, thought, anxiety. He 
had prospered beyond his most ardent hopes. He was the head and 
front of all things in the builder’s yard at Belleville, that yard vvhich 
he entered less than four years ago as a gacheur. There was a talk 
of his being taken into partnership — a well-deserved rew^ard, since it 
was his enterprise, his strength of character, and thorough mastery 
of the science of construction which had obtained from the house an 
important government contract for a great slaughter-house on the 
confines of the city, a contract which brought him renown and posi- 


.IxY ISIIMAELITE. 


KU 


tion to the firm. It was a small thing, perhaps, if set against the 
worlvs of Peto and Brassey ; hut it was the largest business the Belle- 
ville yard had ever had yet, and it scored high for Ishmael. 

With increasing success came ever-increasing labor, plans, esti- 
mates, quantities, the whole science of mathematics as applied to 
iron and stone ; and when the long day of practical work was over, 
io was Ishmael’s custom, after a brief interval of rest, to shut himself 
in his little study, the hermit-like cell opening out of his bedroom, 
and there to devote himself to figures and theory, sometimes work- 
ing on till late in the night. 

“It is not very lively,” Paquerette said sometimes, with a shrug 
of her shoulders, when she spoke to Lisette Moque of her domestic 
life. 

Lisette was the only person to whom she could safely grumble. 
The Benoit girls thought her lot all sunshine, and would have re- 
sented a murmur as a kind of treason. They were always praising 
Ishmael and the happy little home so superior to other homes, so 
peaceful, so secure. They came about once a month to a Sunday 
dinner, and these occasions, M. Vielbois, the little antique professor, 
assisting, had quite a family air. To Ishmael they were delightful 
— a respite from labor and calculation, a lull in the daily tumult, a 
glimpse of domesticity and affection. But after two years of mar- 
ried life Paquerette began to find that there was a sameness. Those 
simple pleasures palled on her imi^atient young spirit. The long 
empty days gave her too much time for thought, since after the 
baby’s death thought with Paquerette only meant thinking about 
herself, her owm‘ pleasures, her owm woes, the possibilities, near 
and remote, of her own life. She wasted very little of her thinking 
power upon Ishmael, considering him only as a person who went 
out in the morning and came home in the evening, who wanted 
to see the apartment neatly kept, and who must have dinner of 
some kind provided for him. From the early morning hours till 
dusk Paquerette had ample leisure for self-communing, for fee- 
ing the burden of the hours, pining for pleasures that were never 
likely to come in her way, regretting that fate had not made her — 
what ? She hardly knew what she would have chosen for her lot 
had the wheel of fortune been put into her hands, with power to 
stop it at whatever number she pleased. She would have liked to 
be something public and distinguished — a creature admired and be- 
loved by all Paris, pointed at as she drove by, applauded almost to 
madness every night upon that vast stage of the opera house where 
she had seen the audience thrilled and hushed in a charmed silence, 
breathless almost, while Bosio poured forth the wealth of her noble 
voice in “ Lucrezia ” or “ Fidelio.” She would have liked to bo a 
great singer — the great singer of the age. Or, failing that, it must 
be sweet to be a famous beauty, a golden-haired divinity, like that 
fashionable enchantress whom she had seen often on the boulevards 
and in the Champs Elysees — a mignoii face, a figure delicate to 
fragility, almost buried amidst the luxury of a matchless set of 
sables, seated in the liglitest and most elegant of victorias, behind a 
pair of thoroughbred blacks. She knew scarcely more than the name 
11 


102 


AJV milMAELlTE. 


of this divinity, which seemed like the name of a poem— Zanita. 
M. de Valnois laughed when she questioned him about Zanita. The 
libtle old professor frowned and shook his head. 

‘ Mere creatures are the avenging angels of those good women 
who were murdered in the Terror,” he said once. “ Those butchers 
of Ninety-three wa-nted a world without princesses or queens ; and 
what have revolutions and changes of dynasty given us instead of 
f he great ladies of France ? Zanita and her sisters— a pestilence to 
decimate the city, a gulf of iniquity in which men are swallowed up 
olive, with their fortunes, their lands, their lives, their honor, their 
names even. ” 


The old professor was pale with indignation as he spoke of the 
fair, frail, golden-haired divinity, distinguishable chiefly to the outer 
world by her diamonds, her sables, her horses, and her hotel ; known 
bos" to the initiated by her epigrams, a gros sel. She was a kind of 
Uiidme-like creature, springing none knew whence, unless it were 
from the gutter. Her very country was unknown. Some said she 
was English, some declared she was American. Her French was the 
language of the Faubourg du Temple, garnished with the gi-aces of 
the quartier Breda. She confessed to neither country nor kindred. 

Paquerette, seeing this life of fine clothes and thoroughbred horses 
trom the outside, fancied it a kind of earthly paradise, and thought 
that next to Bosio, she would like to be Zanita. She confessed as 
much once naively to Hector de Valnois, who sometimes called at 
his friend Ishmael’s lodgings at dusk, before he went to his even- 
ing s amusements. 

“ My child,” he answered, smiling at her, “ you have some of the 
nameless indescribable graces wliich go further than beauty. But 

Zanita’s must begin almost from the 
ciadle. That fine flower of wit which fascinates and enchains Paris 
requires a particular hotbed for its development. No, Madame Ish- 
mael, the stage is the arena for your attractions— a little song, a short 
ppttmoat, and, my faith, the town would be at your feet.” 

“I shall never be allowed to sing that song,” cried Panuerpttp 
discontentedly. “I suppose I am to be buried Sht aliTHts 
sphinxL.” ’ at those everlasting 

She looked almost vindictively at that “garniture de cheminSe ” 
uhich had once seemed to her a thing of beauty and the pride of life 
It ua.5 of true empire style— a black marble dial with gold hands 
«t’ bronze sphinxes, another bronze sphinx 

inrer‘mood°s supporting a bi-azen candelabrum, 

in Jiei moods of depression Paquerette loathed those four sphinxes 
She could not get out of the reach of their glacial metaUic gLe 
sound of Hector de Valnois’ step on the^stair 

coming of youth, hope, gayetv, news of the outer 
world. It meant laughter and life and gladness! 


AN ISILMAEUTN. 


168 


CHAPTER XXII. 

‘ ‘ HOW WEAK IS THINE HEART ! ” 

While Ishmael was plodding steadily on at his trade, which 
seemed to Pacpierette so dull and ponderous a business that to think 
about it made her head ache, his friend of the Rue Montorgueil was 
in high feather. Everything had prospered with Hector de Valnois 
since his return from that wander year of his in the land of the 
Rhine and the Moselle, and amid the pine-clad steeps of Tyrol. 
That time of wandering and f)oetic fancy, of desultory study and 
primaeval innocence, had renewed his strength of mind and body. 
His father was dead and he had inherited his little domain in the 
South, and was selling the patrimonial acres piece by piece, feeling 
that he had another estate in his brains — infinite, inexhaustible. He 
came back to" Pans like a lion refreshed, like a young Samson 
whose shorn locks had grown again, and who felt within him the 
power to overthrow the temples of the Philistines. Some of the 
articles about pictures, music, the drama, which he wrote at that 
period were signed “ Samson Junior ; ” and he brought down the 
roof of many a Philistine temple, as represented by good old, high- 
dried literaiy or artistic reputation. He cast in his lot with the 
young, the original, the untried, the spontaneous. He made fierce 
war against established renown. “Because a man wrote a good 
book thirty years ago, are we to bow down and worship him for the 
]>ad book he writes to-day ?” he asked. “His books have been get- 
ting worse and worse eveiy year, perhaps, and we have been wil- 
fully blind to his decadence, adoiing a tradition.” 

He wrote savagely often, but with a playful lightness which gave 
a zest to his ferocity. His articles were full of variety, the man 
himself being a creature of many moods. He was in no wise a 
genius. He was imitative and i-ecej^tive rather than original ; but his 
power of imitation, his exquisite facility of approbation, passed for 
spontaneous fire. Every new book he read gave him a fresh im- 
petus. His style had all the charms, all the blemishes of youth ; but 
such as it was liis style jjleased and he was able at this time to earn 
an income which, if administered with care and frugality, would 
have left a surplus for laying by, but which, handled with siipieme 
carelessness, enabled him to live as a prince in the Bohemia of 
imperial Paris. 

He had exchanged his dingy apaiiments in the Rue Montorgueil 
for rooms in a fine old house in the Rue de Grenelle, a house which 
in the days of Louis Quinze and Mme. du Barry had belonged to 
one of the magnates of Paris, a prince of the Church. The stately 
]-eception -rooms on the floor above Hector’s nest were panelled, and 
the panels — painted Avitli no mean art — were reversible. On one side 
ai)])ear(Ml innocent landscapes and flow'er pieces, humming-birds, 
butterflies ; but, touch a s])ring, and behold ! Each panel revolved 


1G4 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


on a swivel, and, lo ! the cardinal’s salon was glorified l)y a series of 
mythological subjects which sailed somewhat too near tlie wind to 
be seen by the uninitiated. In the glare of daylight, when the doors 
were open and all the great world of Paris had the right of entree in 
those splendid rooms, the prince of the Church api^eared — a solemn, 
stately figure, against a background of birds and butterflies and 
Arcadian vales and fountains ; but at night, when the curtains were 
drawn and the doors were shut, and the wax candles in the silver 
sconces were lighted, and the tables were laid for the little supper, 
and the Due de Richelieu and other choice spirits were expected, 
tlien Leda and Danag and Latona and Semele came out of the dark- 
ness and smiled upon the orgy. 

Hector’s apartment consisted of four little low rooms, opening one 
out of the other, like Chinese iDuzzle boxes. They were veiy snug 
little rooms, and though to an English mind they would have sug- 
gested stiffness and everything unhealthy, no such objections pre- 
sented themselves to a Frenchman. 

Flushed with the success which had of late crowned his literary 
work, most of all by the vogue of his last vaudeville at the Palais 
Royal — “ Un Man en Vacance” — Valnois had furnished this minia- 
ture abode of his without counting the cost — all the more easily as 
he had so far neither paid for anything nor even looked at the up- 
holsterer’s or the bric-cl-brac dealer’s invoices. The rooms were dec- 
orated and furnished with a dainty elegance, with lightness, bright- 
ness, and luxurious pufiiness and downiness of upholstery. The 
chairs were covered with crimson satin ; the gueridons Avere of that 
graceful Louis Seize style which the empress had lately brought into 
fashion by her quest of Marie Antoinette relics. Barbgdienne 
bronzes and Oriental jars, choice books in still choicer bindings, 
miniatures set in turquoise velvet, rare etchings of doubtful subjects 
adorned the walls. The portieres were of old GobClins tapestry, 
which were supposed to have once screened the sanctuaries of Lu- 
ciennes, and muffled the sound of royal speech and royal laughter 
from the ears of attendants in the antechamber. In a word, M. de 
Valnois was now lodged as a poet, wit, playwright, and art critic, 
an authority on the beautiful, should be lodged, according to the 
eternal fitness of things, whatever might be the ultimate result to 
the tradesmen who had supplied the goods. 

But it was not alone as the joint author of “ Un Mari en Va- 
cance ” that Hector de Valnois was known to the Parisian public. 
He had lately published “ Mes Nuits Blanches,” a volume of short 
poems — the jetsam and flotsam of his desultory youth, the concen- 
trated expression of long days of idleness, long nights of unrest— the 
passionate cries of the young unchastened heart, so fierce in its 
longings, so vague in the midst of its intensity, so inconstant even at 
fever point. Love, unbelief, the sickly envy of the poor and the 
badly placed against the rich and the renowned, the barren ambi- 
tion of the dreamer, all found their expression in this little book. 
The Muses are the father confessors of unhaj^py youth ; and to the 
Muses Hector de Valnois had revealed the darkest depths of his 
heart and mind. The result was piquant ; the book Avas a success. 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


165 


All the critics praised, abused, condemned, applauded in a breath. 
Two poems, a page long, were quoted in almost every review. One 
— “ Getlisemane ” — was blasphemous to audacity. The other — 
“ Cleopatra” — belonged to the order of comx^osition which ought to 
be burned by the j)ublic hangman. But as both had a certain weird 
power, and were perfect in versification, Hector de Valnois’ reputa- 
tion as one of the coming men was an accomplished fact. 

Hector’s head was not turned by this favoring gale. He had al- 
ways believed in himself, and he was in nowise surprised that the 
world called him a genius. He wore his laurels modestly enougli as 
a matter of course, and he had his hats from the best maker in 
Paris. He abandoned his Bohemian style of dress for a more fash- 
ionable attire, but there was even yet a touch of unconveiitionality 
about his costume, a faint flavor of the students’ quarter, the shabl)y 
thoroughfares in the vicinity of the Sorbonne, the highway of youth- 
ful footsteps, the place of cafes, and billiard-tables, and political 
clubs, and concert cellers, and the fever and madness of student life 
in general. 

Hector loved the Rue de Grenelle for two reasons : first, because 
of its old-world air, its grave and grandiose mansions, its glimpses 
of stately town gardens — paradise of stonework and evergreens — its 
exceeding quietude, its aristocratic repose, every other house look- 
ing as if it were the abode of an ambassador or minister of state ; 
secondly, because it was within a few minutes’ walk of some of the 
queerest old streets in Paris, and of the Luxembourg, and the Art 
Schools. He had graduated in the Quartier Latin before he went to 
Heidelberg to take the degree he had failed to get in Paris at a Ger- 
man university. The wildest nights of his wild youth had been 
spent in some of those underground dens — those haunts where the 
music was as vile as the liquor, the company viler than either, and 
where, all the same, youth fancied itself in a privileged atmosphere, 
and gloried in the idea of seeing life. 

Hector no longer relished these underground orgies, but he had 
still a liking for the Quartier Latin as for a friend of his youth ; and 
he played billiards and talked politics, drama, art, and literature in 
one or other of the larger cafes three or four times a week. He had 
not forsaken any of his old friends on the strength of his new fame, 
least of all had he forsaken Paquerette, 

“ You are a great man now, and we shall never see you any more,” 
she said, pouting a little with lips that were rosier than of yore, 
when he showed her some of the reviews of his book. 

“ You will see me only so much the oftener if I am prosperous 
and happy,” he said, smiling at her, smiling with a light in his eyes 
which meant so much more than she could read, and which thrilled 
her ^rith a sense of mystery. “ I shall come to you for inspiration ; 
I never feel so full of ideas as when I have been spending an hour 
of hap])y idleness in this room of sphinxes.” 

‘ ‘ Oh,'" those sphinxes ! ” exclaimed Paquerette with an impatient 
shrug, “ how I detest them ! ” 

“ I ad(we them. Chief sphinx of the sphinxes, most mysterious 
among the mysteries, is the sphinx who walks and talks and has 


AN milMAELlTE. 


IGfJ 


dreamy blue eyes. I never fathom what that sphinx means. Her 
riddle is nngnessable ; and yet I cherish a hope tliat I shall guess it 
some day, and that the answer will mean bliss unsi^eakable.” 

“I wish you would not talk such unmeaning nonsense,” said 
Paquerette, walking to the window with alfected petulance. 

She hardly knew what he did mean, but she knew that she was 
trembling — trembling so that she needed to lean against the window- 
frame for support, pretending to be looking out into the dull, silent 
street, pretending to be interested in emptiness and nobody, which 
was all that was afforded by the prospect below her. 

“Are you going to the opera to-night? — ‘ Rigoletto,’ wuth Eon- 
coni, Mario — perhaps his last season, remember— and a new so- 
prano.” 

“You know I admire ‘Eigoletto.’ But you talk such nonsense. 
How can I go ? ” 

“ Nothing more easy. You can go with Madame Moque.” 

“You have tickets that you can spare? ” 

“ I have a tiny box on the upper tier, which will just hold two 
]ieople comfortably and a third uncomfortably. You and Madame 
Moque shall have the two comfortable seats, and I will look in for a 
few minutes in the evening.” 

“ But you forget ; Madame Moque has to sing at the Cristal.” 

“True,” said Hector; “there is the difficulty. I suj)pose you 
could hardly go alone ? ” 

“ Impossible. Ishmael would be angry.” 

“And your demoiselles Benoit — no, they have a puritanical air 
that would spoil our evening,” muttered Hector, who had discovered 
some little time ago that the Benoit girls were suspicious of his 
relations with Paquerette. 

Paquerette had her grief against her old friends too ; for big Lis- 
beth had taken her to task one evening, after finding M. de Valnois 
sitting at her piano in the dusk, and had told her in very plain 
language that the acquaintance of an agreeable idler of superior 
station and culture was not good for any young wife. 

“If Ishmael likes Monsieur Yalnois, and does not mind his com- 
ing to see us, why should you find fault ? ” asked Paquerette. 

“ I know what women are made of better than Monsieur Ishmael 
does,” answered Lisbeth, bluntly. “ No doubt he believes you are 
an angel, and that you spend all the hours of his absence iii think- 
ing of him and praying for him. Do you supi 30 se it would gratify 
him to know that you are listening to Monsieur Yalnois’ songs, or 
watching Monsieur Yalnois draw caricatures ! ” 

“ My life is dull enough, even counting that relief,” said Paque- 
rette, impatiently. 

“Your life was duller in the Eue Sombreuil, where you were 
beaten and half-starved,” retorted Lisbeth, measuring her from head 
to foot with a look of cold contempt — a judicial look which weighed 
her in the balance and found her wanting. 

She did not conceal her scorn for this w^eak nature — too weak 
even for gratitude, the virtue of the humble-minded ; too weak for 
constancy, too weak for honor. Lisbeth left the house without a 


AJV ISHMAELITE. 


107 


word of adieu. She was too angiy with Puquerette for furtlier 
speech. To have spoken any more would have been to open the 
flood-gates of wrath long held in check. She, who so honored Ish- 
mael, was enraged at seeing how little his wife appreciated him. 
She shrugged and sighed hea^ily as she walked away from the tpiiet 
street in Menilmontant. 

The Benoit girls from that hour became, in the mind of Paque- 
retfce, persons to be avoided. She left off inviting them on Sundays, 
and made feeble excuses when her husband asked why they so sel- 
dom appeared in his home. He was too busy to be curious about 
trifles — busy with head and hands, weighed with the serious respon- 
sibilities of a growing trade, in which the master was a cipher as 
compared with the foreman. 

No ; the opera would lose half its delight if she were to go there 
under the severe eye of Lisbeth or the keen, suspicious glances of 
Pauline or Toinette. 

“Could you not go alone, and let your husband suppose you 
under Madame Moque’s custody ? We might invent an attraction at 
the Cristal,” suggested Hector, quite assured of Paquerette’s long- 
ing to occupy a place in that little box on the uppermost tier. 

“Oh, but to deceive him!” tried Paquerette, reddening with 
shame. 

“ What would it matter? There could be no harm in your going 
to the opera with me. You would be as safe as with Ishmael him- 
self. But I can see the way to a compromise. Madame Moque only 
sings once in the evening. She sings at nine o’clock. When her 
song is over she has only to put on her bonnet and shawl and come 
on to join you at the opera. She can escort you home afterward ; 
and etiquette and Ishmael will be satisfied.” 

Paquerette hesitated. 

“ And I should have to go to the opera alone,” she said. 

“ What of that ? Dress yourself plainly ; take your ticket in your 
hand. You will only have to present it and you vull be ushered into 
the box, where you can sit as quietly and as safely as if you were 
at Mass.” 

Paquerette was a little frightened at the scheme. She had never 
Ijeen to the theatre or opera alone ; never without Ishmael’s full 
consent and approval. He had usually gone to meet her and her 
companion, had been waiting in front of the playhouse when they 
came out. She had nqver yet gone to a theatre with M. de Valnois. 
It was the first time he had suggested such a thing, and it seemed 
natural that he should give her this opportunity of hearing “ Rigo- 
letto,” remembering the second time they met, in the artists’ room 
at the Cristal, and how he had talked to her about the opera. 

She hurried ojBf to the Rue Franche colline, and, after some per- 
suasion, obtained Mme. Moque’s promise to join her at the opera after 
she had sung her grand “ Cuisiniere ” song, which she performed 
in character, with a white apron, bare arms, and a floury counte- 
nance. She would change her stage attire for a black silk gown and 
cashmere shawl with briefest delay, take a cab and drive to the opera 
liouse. She would be there before ten — in time for the {quartette. 


1G8 


AN 181IMAELITE. 


Mme. Moqne, in her heart of heai-ts, cared not a straw for the quar- 
tette, which she had heard murdered so often at her concert hall ; 
bub she thought it very likely that M. de Valnois would take them 
over to Tortoni’s and treat them to ices after the performance ; or 
he might, perhaps, go so far as to offer them a little supper at the 
Maison Doree. The boulevard at midnight was Lisette’s highest 
idea of Paradise. And for Ishmael ! He would be sleeping the sleep 
of the industrious workman, and need never be told whether his 
wife -went home early or late. 

Ishmael w’as later than usual that evening. Paquerette had pre- 
pared his dinner with more than her accustomed care. She had the 
table laid and everything ready at half-past six, and then, finding 
that her husband did not return, she went to her room to dress. She 
had no inclination to dine alone — could not have eaten anything even 
if her husband had been sitting opposite her. She w^as feverish with 
expectation of pleasure and with vague fears. Her hands treml)led 
a little as she dressed herself in her pretty gray merino gown, her 
straw bonnet lined with pale pink plush, setting off the milky skin, 
lighting up the large blue eyes. She had a cashmere shawl — a real 
cashmere, which had cost tw’O hundred francs, Ishmael’s gift. Her 
gloves, her boots, were perfect after their kind. She felt that she 
might stand before kings and not be ashamed. Those fingers of 
hers, once so unskilled, had growm clever and deft enough now in 
the manufacture of pretty things for her own adornment. Her 
gowms and her bonnets were the chief labor of Paquerette’s life. 
Her husband liked to see her prettily dressed — her grace and beauty 
gladdened his eye, and he never asked how’ much money she spent 
on the raw material. He thought her a model of good sense and 
economy because she made her owm gowns. 

When she was ready, and had given a last look at her image in 
the glass — a lily face flushed with faint reflections of rose-color — she 
sat down hurriedly at Ishmael’s desk and wrote him a little note. 
Slie was going to the Italian opera with Mme. Moque, to hear 
‘ ‘ Eigoletto ” — he knew how^ she had always longed to hear that di- 
vine opera — and Mme. Moque would bring her home. She hoped he 
would not be angry — and that the beef would be good. He would 
only have to take the soup and the bouilli out of the saucepan when 
he w'anted it. 

She put the note on the dinner-table, left the beef simmering on 
the stove, and tripped away — tripped with light foot along the road 
so many have travelled before her; the beaten track of sin, which 
begins in softness and verdure, between flow’ery banks and the song 
of birds and the scent of roses ; and wdiich ends in a pathway of 
shards and ashes hemmed in with hedges of thorn and brier. 

She was a little afraid of going into the theatre alone, even fur- 
nished with the box ticket wdiich Hector had given her ; but she w'as 
spared this difficulty, for as she turned into the Place Ventadour she 
almost ran into Valnois’ arms. 

I found I could get here early.” he said, and they Avent into the 
big, grand-looking opera house together, Paquerette looking about 
her as they went along, flushed and breathless. 


AN ISllMAELITE. 


m) 

A great crash of dmms and brass came from the orchestra, like a 
judgment peal, as they were going upstairs, and it scared Paqueretto 
almost as if it had been the last trump. 

It was a long way to ascend. They went past the foyer with its 
gilded pillars and many mirrors — past corridor after corridor, were 
jostled by men and women in evening dress, until at last they came 
to the little box on the topmost tier. Then, as Paquerette drew aside 
the curtain and looked out, the glory and the splendor of the vast 
theatre burst upon her in a blaze of light and color and diamonds 
and beautiful women. It was a fashionable night, in the early days 
of the Empire. Yes, that was the empress yonder in all her gracious 
beauty, fair as a lily, and with that coronet of golden hair which was 
a new and lovely image in the eyes of men ; for it had not yet been 
degraded and vulgarized by tawdry imitations. She was dressed in 
white, with a diamond cross upon her neck and a string of jDearls in 
her hair, the most simply dressed woman in all that vast assembly. 
The age of inordinate luxury in dress had begun, and silks and vel- 
vets and diamonds, plumes and flowers, made a dazzle and confu- 
sion of color in the intense light of the place. It seemed to Paqiie- 
rette as if every man in the house wore a star upon his breast, as if 
every woman had a diamond necklace. The overture was hurrying 
to the grand crescendo of the close, but she only heard the music as 
in a dream. That spectacle of the crowded audience absorbed and 
mastered all her senses. She was nothing but eyes. 

Presently the curtain rose, her spirits grew calmer, and her love 
of music, which was a passion, gained the. ascendant. She forgot 
the diamonds, the loveliness, the sheen and shimmer of velvet and 
silk in yonder dazzling semicircle, and she concentrated her atten- 
tion on the stage and the singers. Hector sat behind her, quite in 
shadow, his arm resting on the back of her chair, his head leaning- 
forward a little, so that his chin almost touched her shoulder, and 
the perfume of his liair was in her nostrils. They were as much 
alone in the great crowded theatre as if they had been in one of the 
glades of Fontainebleau. Later in the second act, when the tragic 
interest of the stage had deepened, when there was a hush in the 
darkened house, Priquerette found that they two were sitting hand 
in hand like acknowledged lovers. She knew not when he had taken 
her hand in his, but she did not try to withdraw it from that firm 
and fervent clasp. She lifted her eyes to his presently in the half- 
darkness, and in that meeting of impassioned eyes there was a full 
confession. Prevaiication, denial after that would have been worse 
than useless. The secret, which had been no secret to him for the 
last six months, was told at once and forever. From that moment 
she surrendered herself to the sweetness of her sin. She never pi-e- 
tended to be true to her husband, or to fight the good fight. The 
little hand lay in his like the pebble in the brook ; the mournful eyes 
looked into his, full of the love which for such weak souls as hers 
means fatality. 

A knock at the box door startled them like a voice from the 
dead. 

“ Who can it be ? ” faltered Puquerette, slarting to her feet. 


170 


AN miMAELITE. 


“ Madame Moque, perhaps,” suggested Hector, whose nerves were 
not quite so highly strung as those of his companion. 

“Mine. Moque— yes, I had forgotten,” murmured Paquorette, as 
she opened the door. 

It was the lively Lisette, bustling, breathless, eager, with powdery 
complexion and blight black eyes, set off by cheeks of vivid bloom. 
Her cashmere shawl was plastered across her chest in the last fash- 
ionable style, and she made a great display of bonnet-strings. 

“You must have wondered what had become of me,” she ex- 
claimed, as she planted herself in front of the box, took her lorg- 
nette, and began a general scratiny of the audience. 

“ Is it late? ” Paquerette asked innocently. 

“ Is it late ? Nearly eleven. I thought I should never get away. 
The people would have the ‘ Cuisiniere ’ over again, and then they 
called for ‘ Elle se mouche trop.’ I thought I should never get 
away. There is the Duchesse Vielle-Eoche, and the Viscomtesse 
Lis Fane. What a house? And there, yes, it is ” 

“Don’t excite yourself,” interjected Hector, as Mme. Moque 
squared her elbows and directed her lorgnette at a box on the pit 
tier, as if she had been taking aim with a gun. 

“ Zanita ! ” exclaimed Mme. Moque. 

Hector’s eyes followed the direction of the lorgnette, and Paque- 
rette looked over his shoulder. He put his arm round her to draw’ 
her into the right position for seeing that central box at the bottom 
of the theatre— a large box, very open — crow’ded with men whose 
breasts glittered with orders, like a court in miniature. A woman 
sat in the midst, lolling back in her chair, fanning herself languidly 
— a w’oman of girlish or even childlike aspect, very fair, very slender, 
with hair lighter and less golden than the emj^ress’, arranged closely, 
fluffily, above the small head, with diamonds gleaming here and 
there amid the.- feathery pile. This w’as Zanita — the w’oman who 
was said to have graduated in the gutter somewhere by the Boule- 
vard de la Chapelle, to have drunk the cup of degi-adation to the 
dregs before she became the rage of Paris. 

She, like the empress, was simply dressed. These great reputa- 
tions are not sustained by common finery. She wore a wiiite frock, 
like a school-girl’s, cut very low upon" the milk-white shoulders, 
revealing the full length of the slim, beautifully rounded arm ; but, 
as she turned suddenly to address one of her court, Paquerette saw 
a corruscation of wiiite light flash from her neck like electric fire, 
and for the first time perceived that the slender throat w’as encircled 
by a diamond necklace, which for brilliancy outshone all other gems 
in the crowded house. 

‘ ‘ What an innocent look the viper has ! ” said Hector, wiien he 
had gazed his fill. 

“ Why do you call her a viper ? Is she so veiy wicked ? ” asked 
Paquerette, still looking at the slim supple figure, the careless feath- 
ery hair and simple China crape gown. 

“ She has slain more people than any assassin wdio w’as ever sent 
to the guillotine or the galleys ; she has done more cruel things than 
St. Armand w’hen he roasted the Arabs in a cave ; she has ruined 


liV I81IMAELITE. 


171 


more families than any fraudulent banker in England, where they 
grow that kind of things to perfection. Fatliers and mothers, sisters 
and brothers have cursed her name. Siie has peopled the morgue 
witli its most distinguished lodgers. She is a X3estilence, a smiling, 
sparkling, amusing scourge. If she were to ask me to supper to- 
night, I should go and laugh at her Jokes and admire her Sevres 
china, and hob nob with the pilnces and ambassadors who are her 
playfellows. I should come away abusing her ; but I should go all 
the same. She is like absinthe, which everybody drinks nowadays. 
She is a -s ice, and she means death ; but the vice is a pleasant vice, 
and nobody counts the cost.” 

Piupierette felt a pang of Jealousy as he spoke. 

“Promise me that you mil never go to her house — never ! ” she 
said eagerly, drawing closer to him, claiming him as her own by the 
pretty vehemence of her air, the look in her eyes, which seemed to 
say, “You are mine, and she shall not have you.” 

“She is not very likely to ask me,” he answered; “and if she 
were to ask, you have but to say, ‘ Do not go,’ ” he added, in a ten- 
derer voice. ‘ ‘ I am your slave from this night. I obey you in all 
things henceforth. Love has no meaning if it does not mean obedi- 
ence.” 

His voice was so low that only the ears of love could have heard 
him, but it was loud enough for Paquerette. Mme. Moque was of 
no consequence, and her head w^as half out of the box as she di- 
rected her lorgnette from group to group, and finally settled down 
in a deliberate contemplation of the empress. 

And now the quartette began, and Paquerette thrilled at the sound 
of those familiar chords. 

“Do you remember the' night you first heard this?” asked 
Hector. She gave a faint sigh, wliich meant “Yes.” 

“So do I,” he whispered. “I told myself that night we were 
created for each other. Fate has come between us since then ; but 
my instinct was true all the same.” 


CHAPTEK XXIII. 

“as A BIRD THAT WANDERETH FROM HER NEST.” 

An offer of supper at the Maison Doree or the Kestaurant Va- 
chette was made, as Lisette had anticipated, but Paquerette refused, 
much to her chaperon’s vexation. 

“ Indeed, I could not eat anything,” she professed, when Hector 
pressed the pt)int, suggesting the Passage Jouffrey, if they did not 
like the full glare of the boulevard, or even the Palais-Royal, though 
that was out of the way ; or they might go to Phillippes’— the Rocher 
de Cancale, (piietest and most classic of haunts, in his own old 
neighborhood, the Rue Montorgueil. 

Piupierette tliought it was cruel to talk of supper, when her nerves 
were strung to their utmost tension, when she seemed walking in a 


172 


miMAELITE. 


new, strange world, and upon jjavements made of air, and had no 
more idea of ever being hungry or thirsty again than a sylph has. 

“It is the very hour for Tortoni’s,” said Hector, when he had 
run the gamut of*^the restaurants as best known to grandin and Bo- 
hemian. “ You shall at least take an ice.” 

He led them across the boulevard in the midst of horses and car- 
riages, and they went to an upstairs room at the famous confec- 
tioner’s, where, forty years before, when Tortoni’s was a rendezvous 
for statesmen and princes, wits and authors, Spolar, the crack bill- 
iard player of the First Empire, used to exhibit his skill, to the de- 
light of such men as Talleyrand and Montrond, and where the head 
w^aiter, Provost, wore hair powder, and combined the manners of 
Versailles and Marly with an equivocal dexterity in the art of giving 
deficient change. 

The windows were open to the balcony and Paquerette could see 
the lights and bustle of the boulevard — carriages pulling up in front 
of the building, beauty and fashion alighting with garments blown 
by the chill March wind. It was a clear spring night — stars shining, 
moon rising above the house-tops yonder. Paris all alive with the 
sound of voices, the hurrying to and fro of feet. There was an ex- 
citement in the very air men breathed just now, for the rumor of an 
impending war grew louder every day. The Bourse was in a fer- 
ment, and that great question as to the custody and ownership of the 
keys of the holy "‘places, the subterranean shrines and churches of 
Bethlehem and GethsCmane, which had long been agitating clerical 
circles, had taken a new de\^lopment and- meant a great war in which 
France and England, the old enemies of Crecy and Waterloo, the 
hereditary foes of six hundred years, were to fight shoulder to shoul- 
der against the Northern foe. 

The alliance was popular, the war was poimlar, and the sons of 
the Gaul were flushed and glad with the prospect of the strife. 

The emperor was keeping pace with the electric eagerness of his 
subjects. New markets, new boulevards, new bridges were in prog- 
ress, works of Augustan grandeur. Already the dens and alleys of 
old Paris were being marked for destruction. Might not this usurper 
by and by paraphrase the boast of the Eoman, and say that he had 
found Paris a city of slums, and that he left her a city of palaces ? 

It was upon this glorified Paris that Paquerette looked out in the 
March midnight, between lamplight and starshine. The theatres 
had disgorged their crowds, the cafes on the boulevard were at their 
apogee. It was the last hour of harmless idleness, of open, inno- 
cent pleasure. A little later and most of those bright fayades would 
be darkened, the crowd would have melted away, and vice and 
crime, the painted houris, the night prowlers, would have the pave- 
ments to themselves, save for the steady footfall of an occasional 
sergeant de-^dlle tramping on his monotonous beat, like a fine piece 
of mechanism that could not possibly work wi-ong. 

Paquerette ate her ice slowly, dreamily, scai’cely tasting the deli- 
cate flavor of last summer’s strawberries, the exotic aroma of crushed 
vanilla. She was listening to Hector de Valnois’ lowered voice, as 
he stood by her side in the window telling the old, old story ^"the 


JSHMAELITE. 


17 ^ 


t emitter’s story, wliicli the serpent whispered to Eve four thousand 
years ago, and which the ears of all Eve’s daughters absorb to-day 
as if it were the newest invention in the world. 

To Paquerette the story seemed full of strangeness and wonder. 
She had been wooed before, she had been won before, wooed hon- 
estly, truthfully, soberly, by a good and brave man ; won easily be- 
cause it had been her convenience to be won. Life had been very 
blank to her when Ishmael offered to share and guard her lot. She 
had flung herself into his arms, as the bird, scared by the terrors of 
an unknown world, flies back to its cage. But there had been no 
vuld rapture in that wooing, very little passion on either side. Her 
heart had never been touched as it was touched to-night. She had 
never before been tempted to surrender conscience, honor, life even, 
as she was to-night, for the love of the lover who pleaded to her. 

Lisette was fond of ices. She ate two of Tortoni’s largest make, 
and had a glass of maraschino afterward to prevent the ices doing 
her any harm. She was so completely occupied by her consumption 
of this refreshment, and by her observation of the people who were 
sitting at the little tables — the women in fashionable gowns, the men 
in fashionable overcoats and gibus hats — that she took very little 
notice of those two standing by the window. And they seemed un- 
conscious of her and of all the outside world, or saw it only as a 
picture — a piece of moving dumb show passing before their eyes, as 
they looked down at the boulevard, with its long line of lamps ; its 
glittering caf^s and theatres. 

“Zanita is not so beautiful as I exj^ected her to be,” said Paque- 
rette by and by, after a pause, her thoughts reverting idly to the box 
on the pit tier, and its little court of men with stars and ribbons. 

“ Beautiful ! Nobody ever called her beautiful,” answered Hector 
lightly. “ She is chic ; she is tlie fashion ; people talk about her — 
that is all. They will talk about somebody else next year ; and 
Zanita will be forgotten. It is a short life and a merry one.” 

“ And the end may be sad.” 

“The end maybe the hospital, or the river, or a brilliant mar- 
riage. Such women as Zanita have made great marriages before 
to-day. Who can fathom the depth of a fool’s folly ? ” 

They went down to the boulevard again, Lisette following them, 
On the steps of Tortoni’s they brushed agsiinst a man of middle age, 
slender, elegant- looking, with the graceful figure of youth, but with 
the careworn forehead, faded eyes, and iron-gray hair and mustache 
of advanced years. 

He recognized Hector with a careless nod, and honored Paquerette 
with a deliberate stare. 

“ Who is that ? ” asked Paquerette, as they passed on. 

“ A kinsman of mine. Balzac says that in every family there is 
one member whose existence is the disease of the rest. That man 
wlio passed just now is our family malady.” 

“ He looks like a gentleman,” said Paipierette wonderingly. 

‘ ‘ He is a whited sepulchre. The history of that man is full of 
dark and secret pages. I never see him without a cold shiver. And 
now my name has come before the public, 1 don’t .suppose he will 


174 


AJy ISIIMAELITK 


let me alone very long. He is a man wlio has always lived npon liis 
fellow-creatures, and no doubt I shall count for something among 
his resources. I shall have to go up and be taxed.” 

It was nearly one o’clock. Puquerette began to be frightened, 
and to hurry her footsteps. What would Ishmael say ? Hector 
reassured her, declaring that her husband would be absorbed by his 
books and drawings, and would not know the hour. There were no 
public clocks in that desert region yonder where Paquerette lived. 

“It is the dullest street in all Paris,” she said, shuddering. “ I 
hate to go back there ; it is like going into a tomb.” 

Hector walked with them to the end of the street, and there he 
and Puquerette parted, with silent pressure of lingering hands, with 
eyes looking into eyes under the street lamp, a parting which fore- 
told of meetings to come, although no words were spoken. Lisette 
accompanied her young friend to the apartment on the second floor. 
If there was to be a quarrel l^etween husband and wife she would be 
there to shield the offender. She had taken Paquerette under her 
wing long ago ; and unhappily she had now taken Hector under her 
wing also. He pleased her, he dominated her by his poetical looks 
and patrician air. He belonged to the world which had always 
been the world of her choice and of her affection ; not the world of 
honest labor and patience in well-doing. 

Ishmael had gone to one of his political clubs, and the conclave 
had lasted until late. He had not yet returned. There was a little 
note for Paquerette on the mantelj^iece : 

“As you are enjoying yourself at the opera, I shall go to the 
Cercle de Lafayette,” wrote Ishmael. “There is to be a grand de- 
bate to-night, and I dare say I shall be late. Don’t wait ui3 for 
me.” 

Paquerette breathed more freely. She dreaded the sight of her 
husband’s face. It was a relief to stave off the evil hour of their 
meeting. 

If she could have told him the truth — that she had long ceased to 
love him — that she had given the strongest feelings of wdiich her 
heart and brain Avas capable to another ! Unhappily, candor is not 
easy in a case of tliis kind. The burden of sin might be lessened, 
perhaps, by some hard and bitter tmths ; but hand in hand with the 
dark shade of sin travels the shadow called shame ; and they tAvo 
must creep on together by obscure passages, by loathsome lanes and 
foulest Avinding ways, rather than face the broad light of day. Al- 
]nost for the first time since her baby’s death Paquerette lay doAAm 
to rest Avithout saying her prayers and without looking at the distant 
graveyard wliere the little one lay. 

Islimael Avent his AA’ay through the bright days of April and May, 
tlie balmier time of June, untroubled by any doubt of his Avife’s 
loyalty or any apprehension of her danger. He avus not a careless 
liusbaiid, but lie Avas a husband whose life Avas so full of Avork, and 
of all-absorbing interests connected Avith that work, as to leaA^e no 
margin for morbid fancies or jealous fears. He loA^ed his Avife as 
much as he had ever yet loA'ed woman, though not, perhaps, so 


.liY I SUM A E LIT K. 


1 7 5 

fondly as he had loved lliose l>aby brothers of his. After his fash- 
ion, he was honestly and faithfully attached to her. She had not 
touched his deepest feelings — she had not entered that holy of holies 
in the heart of man which opens to receive one image in a lifetime. 
The altar in that sanctuary was still empty, the lamj) unlighted. 
She had moved him to pity her ; she had made him fond of her, 
proud even of her graceful prettiness, the growing refinement of 
her thoughts and ways. But she had not gone further than this. 
She had not made herself the sharer of his hopes and dreams, the 
chosen companion of his life. Her society was not all the world ’to 
him — not all-sufficient company for mind as well as heart. He had 
hoped at first that she would become all this, tliat she would learn to 
be interested in all that was vital to his success ; but he found after 
a little while that it was not in her nature to care intensely for any- 
thing outside the narrow circle of her own small interests and 
frivolous pleasures. Her piano was more to her than all the life- 
blood in all the hearts of Paris. A new song moved her more than 
the mightiest convulsions that stirred her country. This talk of an 
impending war in the East, for instance — a war which, however 
victorious for France, must inevitably swallow up thousands of 
French soldiers in a gulf of fire — hardly moved her with one fear or 
grief. She could not realize the pain or loss of others, outside the 
little space which was her world. 

“You will not have to fight, will you?” she asked her husband 
with a touch of anxiety. 

“No, love. I had a lucky number drawn for me two years ago 
at Eennes. A good priest I know looked after the business, and I 
am exempt.” 

That was all she cared to know. The cannon might thunder ; 
France and the foe might roll in the dust, destroying and destroyed ; 
so long' as the horror and the terror of it all came not across her path. 

The little rift within the lute, this lack of sympathy between hus- 
band and wife, had gradually widened to a great gulf. Ishmael 
had come to regard his pretty young wife as the ornament of his 
domestic existence — a something to be cherished and cared for, to be 
kept beautiful and neat, but not as the half of his life. If he were 
worried he told Paquerette nothing of his trouble ; if he were flushed 
with some idea, some improvement or invention which might bring 
liim gain and fame in the future, he did not ask her to share his 
hopes. He had tried to interest her in his work, to explain Ihe 
beauties of the mechanical art, but she had not even tried to unde: - 
stand him. She had shrugged her shoulders, and turned away fixcii 
his diagrams with disgust. Why could he not draw caricatuies 
after Gavarni— soldiers, battle-scenes, after Meissonier, as Heclor 
de Valnois did, instead of those everlasting wheels and angles and 
numerals which he was for ever jotting with his clumsy carpenter’s 
]jencil ? 

Ptefused all sympathy where it would have pleased him best to 
find it, Ishmael becanie daily more devoted to his work and liis 
studies. That thirst for knowledge which had been an instinct with 
him as a little child on board the steamer — when he wanted to know 


176 


AN ISmiAELlTE. 


why the engine did this or that, and who made the waves rise and 
fall, and why the sun was red in the evening — was still a i3art of his 
nature. Like that heaven-born mathematician. Clerk Maxwell, who 
used to question his mother about everything he saw, “ What is the 
go of it ? ” “ Yes,” when adequately enlightened, “ but what’s the 

particular go of it ? ” — Ishmael, in imitation of this eager curiosity, 
advanced from the rudimentary labors of a simple gacheur to a very 
considerable mastery of the mechanical arts as involved in the trade 
of a builder and contractor. Nor had he narrowed his mind within 
the circle of his own interests. His evening recreations, always of 
an intellectual kind, took him among circles where all things in 
heaven and earth were discussed with the fervor of youth and enthu- 
siasm. His clubs were democratic clubs, for albeit proscription had 
thinned the ranks of republicanism, and the shining lights were for 
the most part languishing in the purlieus of Leicester Square, and 
wasting their eloquence in the restaurants of Rupert Street and Cas- 
tle Street, there were thinkers and talkers among the Reds still left 
in Paris, dreamers who cherished the old impossible dream of a 
France self-governed, a democracy of all the talents. Strange for 
those who have survived until to-day to discover that a Republic is 
ever so much more costly an institution than even an empire, and 
that nepotism and place-hunting, and bloated sinecurists, and cats 
that catch no mice, can thrive as well under the flag of the people as 
under golden eagles and an imperial master. 

All young men are radicals at heart, and Ishmael had a sneaking 
fondness for the Reds in these early years of the empire, albeit he 
could see that the new master of France was doing great things for 
the country, most of all in the building line, and was a man to be 
respected as a worker and not a king of Yvetot. 

Th^ summer wore on, the allied armies were marching upon 
Varna, and the Russians, after terrible repulses and losses, had raised 
the siege of Silistria. War news was eagerly waited for in Paris ; 
but of that fatal expedition to the marshes and deserts of the 
Debrutja, which cost France so many of her bravest soldiers, the 
Parisians were told very little in those days. It is only long after a 
war, in the journals of doctors and newspaper men, that the dark 
story of disease and famine, the shameful details of mismanagement 
and neglect, become known to the world. 

There was trouble nearer home than in the swamps washed by the 
Danube. _ The pestilence which raged in those Roumanian deserts, 
in tlie tainted atmosphere of Varna was doing its deadly work in 
France and in England. 

That year of 1854 was one of those terrible seasons which are re- 
membered as cholera years. A cloud of death hung over the crowded 
slums of Paris and London. The black flag hung at the entrances 
of streets and alleys, warning the stranger of his peril. It was a 
dreadful time ; and yet the daily work of men and women went on, 
houses were built as well as coffins, the clink of the hammer sounded 
cheerily on.jthe new boulevards and in the new markets, and there 
were merrymakings and holidays, and the ribald jesters who make 
light of heaven and hell cried, as of old, “ To the health of tlie 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


177 


cholera ! ” as they tossed off their cogne or their pgtrole at the wine- 
shops on the road to the overcrowded cemetery, where the gorged 
earth refused to perform its office of purification, and the reeking 
field was one foul mass of corruption and decay. 

Ishmael laughed to scorn all danger for himself, but he was full 
of care for Paquerette. He looked at her anxiously every evening 
\vhen he came from his work, took her little hands in his and drew 
her toward him in the full light of the window to see if there were 
any sign of the spoiler in that delicate face. But Death, the Spoiler, 
had set no mark upon Paquerette’s beauty. There was a w^orse 
enemy at work, and Ishmael saw no sign of that greater evil. 

Never had Paquerette looked prettier than in these August even- 
ings. She knew how to set off her beauty to the utmost advantage ; 
she had acquired the art of dress to the highest perfection compati- 
ble with small means. She followed the fashions with an admirable 
dexterity wliich imparted to cheap cashmere and a straw bonnet all 
the grace and style of famous milliners in the court quarter. And 
there was a new brightness in her manner that heightened her deli- 
cate prettiness — a light in her eyes, a flush upon her cheek, a faintly 
tremulous look in the half-parted lips which recalled the image of a 
bird poising itself on quivering wings before flashing into sudden 
flight. Ishmael remembered just such a look in her face that day 
at Vincennes, when, almost strangers to each other, he held her in 
his arms as they waltzed to the music of the cracked old organ on 
the scanty trampled gi’eensward. 

Ishmael was nervous about his wufe’s comings and goings at 
this time of iiestilence. He questioned her mor^losely than of old 
as to where she went, warned her against infected neighborhoods. 
They were only too near the fever-dens of that terrible Passage 
Menilmontant, with its double range of low houses, black with the 
grime of centuries ; its blind windows, and dark and filthy en- 
trances w’hich look like the openings of caverns ; its population of 
rag-pickers, sewer men, dealers in broken glass ; its foul odors from 
gutter and muck-heai-), mixed with the reek of coarsest viands ; its 
low-browed, murderous wine-shops, where bottles and knives play 
their part in many a midnight brawl, and where in the gray light of 
next morning the patron wipes the stains from tables where the 
red splashes are as often of blood as of wine. Here the cholera 
fiend might be supposed to find congenial quarters, to hold high 
revel in a nest that had been prepared for his coming. 

Ishmael entreated Paquerette to avoid all such neighborhoods ; 
to take the broad airy highways, when she went for her walks ; to 
l)e careful what shops she entered ; in a word, to go about as little 
as possible. 

“ If I were to take your advice I should make myself ill by stay- 
ing at home,” she answered fretfully one morning when he was par- 
ticulai'ly urgent in his lecture. “I should get the cholera merely 
from brooding upon it. Monsieur Vielbois told me there w’as noth- 
ing so bad as fear and low spirits. You need not be afraid that I 
sliall go for a walk in the Passage Menilmontant ; it is quite bad 
enough to live within a quarter of a mile of that detestable place. 

le 


17S 


AN I8I1MAEL1TE. 


I seldom go anywhere, except to Madame Moque’s, and I generally 
do all my marketing with her.” 

“I am" glad of that,” said Ishmael. “Lisette is a clever woman 
and she won’t lead you into danger. Oh ! by the by, you have given 
me so many charcuterie dinners of late. You know I am not par- 
ticular what I eat, but one gets tired of that kind of thing day after 
day— a perpetual flavor of garlic and sage, or that faint taste of stale 
truffles ; and when a man has to be about all day using his arms and 
legs, a more nourishing diet is better.” 

“ I thought you liked me to deal with the Moques,” retoiiied his 
wife, sullenly. 

Forgetfulness and indifference had been growing upon her of late 
in regard to all domestic affairs. She thought more of a pair of 
new gloves or bonnet strings than of her husband’s dinner ; and just 
at the last, as she was hurrying home from a day in fairer scenes, 
she would look in at Moque’s en passant, and ask him to send some- 
thing — anything — for dinner at once ; and in this manner Ishmael 
had been made to consume a good deal of the rebut of the charcu- 
tier’s shop. 

“ Yes, I like you to deal there for anything we really want,” an- 
swered Ishmael, quietly. He was not the man to lose his temper 
for such a detail as a bad dinner seven days a week. “ But we need 
not live all the year round upon cold pig to oblige Lisette’s husband. 
Beef and mutton are an agreeable variety, and a good deal more 
wholesome. Let us have beef and mutton in future, my pet.” 

“ That means that I am to be at home all the afternoon to cook 
the dinner,” said Riquerette, petulantly. 

“ Surely a pot-au-feu is not such a troublesome business as that ! 
Why, what a little gadabout you have grown ! ” 

Paquerette crimsoned and looked down. 

“ My life is so dull in this dreaiy room,” she said, “ with those in- 
tolerable sphinxes staring at me ail day long.” 

“ Y’ou have your piano, dear.” 

“ If I hadn’t I should go mad. I tell you it does mo good to get 
into the air. You are out all day. Why should I be cooped up 
within four walls ? ” 

“ There is some difference,” answered Ishmael, gravely. “ I have 
to go out to work for our daily bread, while you have only the home 
to tliink about.” . 

“ If I were not to go out now and then home would be as bad as 
St. Lazare,” retorted PMquerette, petulantly. “I would rather bo 
back in the Eue. Sombreuil, where I could" sit in the yard all dav. 
At least I could see a little bit of sky overhead, and hear voices froni 
twenty open windows, and see faces and people coming and going. 
This house is like a tomb.” 

“It is something to be in a respectable house where there are only 
honest people,” answered Ishmael, feeling nearer anger than he had 
ever yet felt with Paquerette. “ I don’t think you ought to com- 
plain of the dulness of your life. Of late you have gone to a tliea- 
tre or a concert two or three times a week. I wonder Lisette can so 
often get away from the Cristal.” 


AN ISlIMAELirE. 


179 


“ They are f'irecl of her at the Cristal,” said Paqiierette, shortty. 
“ They want newer faces, younger singers. If you would only have 
let me sing my little patois songs at the Cristari should have been 
able to earn forty or fifty francs a week, and then you would not be 
the only person to earn our daily bread.” 

These last words were spoken with a sneer, the token of irritated 
nerves. Paquerette kept glancing at the solemn black faced clock 
between the bronze sphinxes: Her husband had come home to 
breakfast and was returning to his work later than usual. She ex- 
pected a letter which must not be delivered while Ishmael was there, 
and she was in agonies. 

‘ ‘ My child, how pale you are ! ” cried her husband, pausing with 
casquette in hand. “ Pm afraid you are ill.” 

“ No, no ; only a little nervous. You worry me so with all that 
solemn talk about nothing. There, there ! don’t be late for your 
work. You shall have beef for your dinner, as much as you can eat, 
and I will not make my debut at the Palais de Cristal ; that is all 
past and done with.” 

“ My pet, can you wonder that I refused to let you appear before 
that rabble yonder ? You, my wife, with bai’e arms and shoulders, 
and a painted face, like the rest of them ! The very thought of it 
fills me with horror.” 

“ I might have appeared at the opera and made a mad success — 
like Bosio, perhaps, but for you,” she said gloomily. “ It is hard 
when God has given one talent to be obliged to hide one’s light un- 
der a bushel.” 

“ My dear, the time may come when your light will not be so hid- 
den,” answered Ishmael with infinite patience. “ I may be a rich 
man some day, and then you can sing to an audience whose praise 
will be Avorth having, without appearing on a public stage.” 

“ ‘ May be,’ and ‘ some day,’ ” mocked Paquerette. “ I have heard 
those words before. The grandfather used to say he would be rich 
some day. ” 

Ishmael stooped to kiss her reluctant lips, and went his way with- 
out another word. What good is there in arguing Avith a spoilt child 
crossed in its fancy ? 

When- he went home that evening Paquerette was absent as usual, 
but there was a large piece of beef simmering in the pot-au-feii, from 
which rose a goodly odor of vegetable soup, and the cloth was laid 
neatly Avith a solitary cover. 

Beside the wine bottle there lay a letter, in Father Bressant’s 
quaint, cramj>ed hand, a brief letter, but to the purpose, and quite 
long enough to spoil Ishmael’s dinner. 

“ Go at once to Pen-Hoel,” wrote the priest. “ The pestilence has 
been busy in our pooi* village, and there has been great trouble at 
the chateau. Lose no time, if you would see your father alive. If 
I am spared I shall meet you there.” 

Ishmael wrote a line to Paquerette telling her that he was going 
to Brittany to see a relative dangerously ill. He left her money to 
last for a fortnight, but hoped to be back Avith her in a Aveek. He 
promised to write as soon as he arriA^ed at his destination ; urged her 


180 


AJV ISIIMA ELITE. 


to keep up her spirits and take care of her health. She could stay 
^Yith Mme. Moque during his absence, if she felt dull or nervous 
alone. 

He left his dinner untasted. On his way out he looked into tlie 
meat shop where Mine. Morice sold her groceries, her chocolate, 
burnt onions for gravies, and little bottles of mushrooms and an- 
chovies in oil, the refinements of the gi-ocer’s tiade, which had but 
a small sale in the neighborhood, only the Morices were a jirudent 
and frugal couple, neither gave nor took credit, lived upon little, 
and contrived to make a small business profitable. 

‘ ‘ I am called away into the country by illness, ” said Ishmael hur- 
riedly. “ If you can look after my wife a little in my absence, I 
shall take it as a favor. She may mope while I am gone, poor 
child ! ” 

“I do not think madame will mope very much,” was the answer, 
with a curious shrug of her shoulders ; “ but I will do what I can 
for your sake.” 


CHAPTER XXIV. 

“as messengers of death.” 

The rail carried Ishmael to Chartres between nightfall and morn- 
ing. He started for Alen9on on the banquette of a diligence in the 
gray light of a September dawn, with a cold wind creeping over the 
housetops and along the empty streets. From Alen^on another dili- 
gence took him to Foug^res. On alighting at the inn where the 
diligence stopped, he found the only person astir was a sleepy waiter 
in a salle-a-manger redolent of the fumes of last night’s wine and 
last night’s tobacco, blended with faint fetid odors left by the din- 
ners of the last week. This person informed him that the diligence 
for Pontorson did not start till two o’clock in the afternoon ; so 
after some difficulty he negotiated the hire of a horse, for which he 
left nearly all the contents of his ])ocket-book by way of deposit. 
Mounted on this unknown brute, which behaved after the manner 
of Normandy horses for the first two or three miles, he left the an- 
tique town, with its picturesque castle and medifeval towers, and 
rode at a steady six miles an hour toward the boundaiy line of Brit- 
tany. How strange, arid yet how familiar, the landscape seemed to 
him ! — the long, straight road, now ascending and now descending, 
by many a gentle undulation, and by some steepish hills ; the quiet 
fields, so dim and gray and unreal under the morning mists. The 
tall poplars, the luxuriant hedgerows, the narrow streams. How 
different from the stony wilderness in which he had lived for the 
last three years, amid the ceaseless din of voices, the everlasting 
tj’ead of multitudinous feet ! What a feeling of peace in the air ! 
Y\Tiat a holy stillness, broken only by the cry of the. corncrake, or 
the croaking of frogs in a marshy corner under the alder-hedge yon- 
der. The old scenes, the old atmosphei-e, brought back the memory 


AN I8HMAELITE. 


181 


of old stories, old superstitions, which he had heard told again and 
again beside the wide chimney-place in the kitchen at Pen-Hoel, 
where the little hunchbacked, sandy-haired tailor, employed on the 
premises to make liveries for the coachman and footman, and whose 
workmanship was deemed good enough for the unloved eldest son, 
took his meals at a corner of a table apart from outdoor and indoor 
seiwants, as an inferior being, but was received into the friendly 
circle sometimes after supper, and made much of, for the sake of 
his inexhaustible fund of anecdote and legend. From the tailor’s 
pallid lips, or from the wandering Pillawer, admitted to the kitchen 
hearth for an evening and lodged in a stable or a barn for the night 
after, Ishmael had learnt all that he knew of his native province. 
From these he had lizard many an awful story of shipwreck, and 
. the sailor’s prayer. “ Lord, save us ! our boat is so small and thy 
sea is so big ; ” of the huri’icane which is never lulled till the waves 
have cast up the corpses of heretics and all other evil creatures ; of 
the ghostly multitude of the drowned wdiose phantom forms show 
wdiite upon the edges of the waves on the Day of the Dead ; of the 
spiiit voices, piteous, lamenting, which fill the Day of the Dej^arted 
Avith a sound of wailing. 

Here, too, he had heard of the strange-looking men clothed in 
wliite raiment, black-bearded, carrying staves and with sacks upon 
their shoulders, who used to be seen after nightfall on the lonely 
roads between Chateaulin and Quimper— men of dark and fatal 
aspect. The custom-house officers will tell you that these are 
smugglers ; but do not believe them. They are demons, who proAvl 
around the abodes of the dying, waiting to cany off the souls of the 
dead, and, if the good angel of the dying is not quick enough, the 
helpless souls are bundled into the demon’s bag and carried off' to 
the marshes of St. Michel, where they lie hidden in holes and foul 
places till they are set free by mass and prayer. Those dismal 
marshes are peopled with souls in pain ; and if you pass that way at 
night you will hear the cry of their anguish mixed with the wailing 
of the wind among the reeds. 

Beside that evening fire he had heard of the wreckers of old, and 
how, like their opposite neighbors on the Cornish coast, they lighted 
bonfires to beguile the helpless mariners ashore ; or how they would 
tie a lantern to the horns of a bull, twisting the rope round one of 
his fore-legs, so that at eveiy step the animal lowered or lifted his 
head, with a swaying motion of the lantern, which made it look 
from afar like the light of a ship at sea, thus luring the un-wary 
sailor on the rocks. Very fixed was the belief of the Breton of those 
days that all which the sea cast up on his shore was his rightful 
property. 

Here, too, Ishmael had heard of gnomes and fairies, benevolent 
or malicious ; of the earth-men, husbands of the fairies, the poulpi- 
cans, the Breton Robin Goodfellows, who ring their fairy bells in 
the w'oods to deceive the poor little shepherd lads in quest of their 
lost goats, Avho run after the girls who go home too late from night- 
Avateh or Pardon. Here he had listened to wonderful legends of the 
city of Ys sAvalloAved uj) by the sea ; you may see the stones of her 


1S2 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


ancient altars at low tide, fifteen or twenty feet beneath the clear 
water. 

Strange to come back from Paris, the city where people believed 
in so little, to this quiet country where they believed so much; 
where the humble village priest, a son of the soil, born of peasant 
parents, reared at the tail of the plough, was a power and an influence ; 
whore the fleur-de-lis was still a sacred symbol, and the flag of Ke- 
publicanism was a rag striped with blood ; where the memory of the 
Ohouans, with their screech-owl cry, was still fresh in the minds of 
the people, and the stories of atrocities committed on one side by 
the hated Blues— the soldiers of the Republic — on the other by the 
sons of the soil, were still told by the winter fire. 

Yes, it was a backward and ignorant land’ a land of old supersti- 
tions, old creeds, old loyalties ; but, whatever it was, Ishmael loved 
every rood of its green fields, every tree and every hedge-flower. 
He had been happy in the great city, full of work in the present, 
fall of hope for the future ; but he had no love for that stony wilder- 
ness. He thought of Paris as an embodied indifference to man and 
his sufferings — cold, inaccessible, inhuman. You might starve or 
rot in her alleys, and she would care notliing. You might drown 
yourself in her river ; you might languish in her prisons. You 
might steep yourself in those foul vices which seemed an element of 
her atmosphere, and she would care not one jot for your agony, your 
despair, your ruin of soul and body, your untimely death. The 
best she would give you would be a free funeral. 

Bat here, in these country roads, among these pleasant meadows, 
it seemed to him as if all nature thrilled with sympathy. The ani- 
mals came to the field gates and looked at him gravely, wuth eyes 
full of friendliness. The birds in the hedgerows chirped and twit- 
tered for him. The soft motion of leafy boughs had a kind of 
language ; and the clouds sailing above his head had a meaning here 
W'hich they never had in Paris, where he rarely lifted his eyes sky- 
W'ard. 

He was full of anxiety about his father, whom he might never 
again see alive — the letter seemed to mean as much as that ; and yet 
the very atmosphere of his native land comforted him. He thought 
of his young brothers, and what delight it would be to clasp them 
to his breast, to see the bright young faces, to feel the touch of those 
loving lips. Would they have forgotten him in four years ?— half a 
lifetime for the younger of the twm, wdio would be only seven no^v. 
This w^as a question which troubled him sorely. It wmuld be such 
a blow to find himself forgotten. Of the heritage that lie had re- 
nounced, or of his father’s injustice in exacting such a sacrifice from 
him, he thought not at all. He cared nothing for money in the ab- 
stract ; and he had a conviction that he was going to be ricli some 
day. ^ Of all the schemes that he had ready for development when 
the chance arose, some one would prove a mine of gold. He had 
heard many histories of men who had made fortunes, beginning 
with nothing, and he knew that he was on the right track. 

It was a long ride to Pontorson, and he had to rest and refresh his 
horse on the way. He left the animal at the inn near the bridge, 


AN mmiAELlTE. 


188 


tliiuking to save time by walking the seven miles that lay between 
him and his destination, rather than by waiting to rest his horse. 
Three o'clock was striking as he crossed the bridge ; and now he 
was really in his own province, his foot ui:)on his native soil. The 
hedgerows and fields he had seen hitherto were Norman hedgerows 
and fields. There was very little difference between the two prov- 
inces, so far ; but to Ishmael it seemed as if the soil had another 
look, as if the orchards were more fertile, the cottages more homely, 
after he had crossed the river. 

He walked at a swinging pace, more eager, more anxious as ho 
drew nearer home. At Pontorson they had told him terrible things 
of tile cholera. The hand of God had been heavy upon the little 
town, they said ; for whereas in Paris, in the time of pestilence the 
people were always inclined to suspect some human infamy working 
evil — the Government poisoning the wells, or something equally dia- 
bolical — the simple rustic recognized the chastisement of an offended 
Heaven. 

“ Have there been no precautions taken?” asked Ishmael of the 
priest who told him how the funeral bell had been sounding daily, 
as in the awful year of ’32, when a \’ision of gigantic women in red 
garments had been seen at Brest just before the coming of the pesti- 
lence, blowing the blast of death across the valley. 

The priest jDointed to half a dozen open graves dug in advance. 
This was how they had prepared for the scourge. A sombre sense 
of fatality possessed their souls. “God has given us over to the 
demon,” they said. The gorged graveyard was a focus of infection 
in the midst of each settlement ; but the idea of cariying away their 
dead to a distant cemetery, banishing the departed from the family 
grave, from the bones of dead and gone ancestors, from the sound of 
the voices of the living, from the lights of the village, was rej^elled 
as a kind of sacrilege. 

Just outside a little bourg Ishmael met a farmer’s cart, with a 
woman sitting on the shaft and a man walking at the horse’s head. 
The horse was smart with his collar of blue sheepskin and his tas- 
selled bridle. He had a branch of Spanish, chestnut tied ui)on his 
head to keep off the flies, and was decked with bells which tinkled 
gayly as he went along. But the faces of the man and woman were 
full of gloom. A little procession in black raiment walked behind 
the cart ; and in the cart, wrapped in their winding-sheets, lay the 
coiq.'ses of two children on a bed of purple clover, fresh flowers and 
foliage scattered above them. The plague had been busy in tine 
villages and farms, and there had been no time to make coffins for 
the dead. These were to be laid in the cool, dark earth of their 
grandfather’s grave. 

The sight of that melancholy train filled Ishmael with a sudden 
lioiTor. His brothers ? Had they escaped the pestilence ? He iiad 
thought of them till this moment as the emlrodiment of lieaLh and 
vigor. It had not occurred to him that they could be ill. But 
tlie look of white despair on the mother’s face, the father’s gloomy 
brow, and those young forms lying side by side amid the clover 
am.l the leafage, seemed like a ])resage of evil. Were things as bad 


1S4: 


AN ISIIMAlELJTK 


as this in the neighborhood of Pen-Hoel ? And how could he be 
sure his brothers were not in peril ? 

He took out Father Bressant’s letter and read it hastily. There 
had been trouble at the chateau. That trouble he had taken here- 
tofore to be his father’s illness ; but it seemed to him now that the 
trouble was a thing apart — a something which had preceded his 
father’s malady. He was almost within sight of the village in the 
hollow, he was on the very spot where he had parted from the good 
priest three years ago ; yes, just on the crest of the hill he had 
turned to watch the vanishing figure of his one faithful friend. He 
was so near, yet all in a moment he was stricken with the sudden 
sickness of a great fear, and it seemed to him as if his feet refused 
to carry him any farther. He felt as if he must sink down upon a 
bank and lie tliere helpless, inert, till chance brought some one by 
who could tell him what had happened at the chateau ; could assure 
him that his brothers were alive and well. Then, and then only, 
could he have strength to go the rest of the way. 

He sat down for a few moments, wiped the cold dew from his 
forehead, and nerved himself to finish his journey. Why should the 
death of those i^easant children so alarm him ? Neglected, poorly 
fed,, badly lodged, they were an easy prey for the destroyer. But 
his darlings were lodged luxuriously, cared for tenderly, watched 
by day and night. Why should he fear for them? What shelter 
could be a safer stronghold from pestilence and death than the old 
home of his forefathers, which had never l^een polluted by the oc- 
cupation of strange races ? Clever as he was in the constructive 
arts, he had not 3 ’et been aw^akened to the broad questions of sanita- 
tion, and he did not know that these good old family mansions are 
often dens of fever and sinks of hidden pollution. 

He quickened his pace for that final mile, and he was a little 
breathed when he stood before the door of Father Bressant’s ju’es- 
bytery, which was not much superior to the neighboring cottages, 
while the habits of the priest were even less luxurious than those of 
his humblest parishioners. 

The door stood open to air and sunlight, the little parlor had its 
old orderly, peaceful look, fuimished with a fine old cherry-wood 
23 ress with brass mounts, and solid walnut-wood writing-table, and 
three or four century-old chairs, an inheiitance from a peasant an- 
cestiy. A secretaire in a corner displayed a couple of shelves of 
books, a collection which, small and shabby as it might be, gave a 
learned air to the room, while u^^on the high mantelshelf a few 
pieces of Kouen pottery and a handsome pair of brass candlesticks 
made an improvement upon the usual village decoration of saucepan 
lids and flat irons. The room was empty, but on the priest’s desk 
there lay a letter directed to M. Sebastian Caradec. 

“ Go at once to the chateau. No time to be lost.” 

That was the whole of the letter. The stroke of the death-bed 
startled Islimael as he read the iDiiest’s injunction. 

He skirted the churchyard as he went up the hill to Pen-Hoel. 
There was no one to be seen in the little cemetery. Islimael saw 
an open grave near the tower from which that dismal reverberation 


AN ISIIMAELITE, 


ISo 


of the bell pealed out at solemn intervals like a minute gun. An 
old man was pulling the rope just inside the doorway of the tower. 
Ishmael’s first impulse was to stop and question this ancient sexton, 
but remembering that the man was stone deaf, and painfully slow 
of apprehension even when he heard, he hurried on. The cui^ola 
of the chateau was visible above the crest of the wooded slope. 
Ishmaers feet were familiar with every possible and impossible ap- 
proach to th,e i)lace of his birth, and he went straight as the crow 
hies, making a line through the underwood athwart the great boles 
of the chestnuts and oaks, until he leaped upon the low balustrade 
of the terrace and stood in front of the low range of windows, cur- 
tained just as of old, with the same air of a house in which every- 
body has gone to sleep. No, not quite the same as of old. He 
started back at the sight of the doorway draped with black, solemn 
funereal velvet, sprinkled with silver notes of admiration, which were 
meant to represent tears. The fuiieral bell boomed and vibrated in 
the green hollow yonder, and from the shadowy doorway there came 
a slow and solemn train. A coffin heaj^ed with flowers was bore into 
the light, and then came the priest in his robes and his acolytes in 
their white surplices. Two gentlemen followed, in deep mourning, 
and with dismal countenances, then three of the old servants whom 
Ishmael remembered, and this was all. 

He stood aside while the funeral procession passed along the ter- 
race and went slowly down the drive. Neither priest nor mourners 
had looked at Ishmael. He want into the house and upstairs to his 
father’s room, without meeting a mortal. 

Outside the door of that well-remembered chamber he came to a 
dead stop. How often he had entered that room in days gone by to 
be lectured, reproved, threatened ! — hardly ever to receive word or 
token of affection. And now it was perhaps the chamber of death, 
and he would enter it like Esau, robbed in advance of his birthright. 
For the portion he had surrendered he cared nothing ; but there was 
a touch of bitterness in the thought of how the surrender had been 
exacted from him. 

He knocked softly, but there was no answer, and then he opened 
the door quietly and went in. The room he thus entered was his 
father’s study and favorite sitting-room. Monsieur’s bedroom 
opened out of it on one side, madame’s on the other, with her bou- 
doir and dressing-room beyond. 

The study was empty, and Ishmael went through to his father’s 
bedroom. A sister of charity was n sleep iu an arm-chair by the 
window’. The bed w’as in an alcove, heavily draped, remote from 
the light ; and in the deep shadow M. Caradec’s face had the leaden 
pallor of death. As Ishmael approached with noiseless footfall the 
father’s eyes opened and looked at his son. 

“ Sebastian !'’ he muttered. “Then there is something of my 
blood living still ? ” 

“ My brothers ! ” gasped Ishmael, frozen by that speech, unable to 
contain himself. 

“You have no brothers. They were laid in their graves a week 


ISO 


Ay TSJIMA EL TTE. 


ago. Their mother followed them just now. You must have met 
tile funeral.” 

“Yes.” Ishmael fell on his knees bv tho bedside, buried his 
head in the coverlet and sobbed aloud. 

The sister opened her eyes, saw that kneeling figure, understood 
in a moment and stole quietly from the room, leaving father and 
son together. 

“What can you care for their death?” said his father, bitterly. 
“You abandoned your home and your kindred — renounced your 
name. You were always at heart an alien.” 

“Who made me an alien, father?” asked the young man, lifting 
up his head and wiping aw^ay th<3se blinding tears. “ My liomo w as 
less than a home, my kindred were not like kindred, except those 
dear little children. They loved me and I loved them, truly, dearly, 
with all my heart, looking forwwd with hope to a day wdien we 
should be brothers again, and know each other and love each other 
again.” 

“Broken links are not so easily reunited,” said the count, 
quietly. “Your brothers w-ere stricken by cholera last w^eek. 
First one dropped and fell, then the other. Within four days from 
the first note of alarm both were dead. Their mother was in a state 
of hysteria from the hour her elder boy was stricken, and tw-o days 
after the double funeral the scourge took hold of her. It is in the 
very air w'e breathe. The earth we tread upon reeks with x>oison. 
It hangs in the heavy mists of evening and morning, and clings to 
the sodden leaves of the trees. It is everywhere — in ditches, W’ells, 
marshes, copses, cottage gardens. The poor have been dying like 
rotten sheep. If I have escaped, it is because the hand of death was 
on me already. The grief and agony of the last fortnight have only 
hastened my end. You should not have come here Sebastian. Y’ou 
are coming into the jaws of death.” 

“ I am not afraid of death. The cholera is raging in Paris, too. 
Father Bressant wrote to tell me that you w’ere ill. But you have 
been ill a long time, it seems. He ought to have written to me 
sooner.” 

Everything in the invalid’s appearance told of a lingering malady, 
a slow decay. The stroke of the pestilence w'as not here. The 
grailual w^earing out of a joyless life — disappointment, vain regret, 
carking care — these W’ere the foes that had sapped the citadel. 

“ I have been ailing for a long time,” answ'ered M. Caradec, “but 
have not been dangerously ill. Father Bressant teased me for per- 
mission to write to you some months ago, but I forbade him. I told 
him that you had taken your own road in life, and that all links be- 
tween us were broken. But he Avrote to you after all, it seems. 
And you have come — come to see me die.” 

He s]3oke slowly and Avith evident effort. A short, hard cough 
stopped his utterance every now and then, and Ishmael saAV that the 
wdiite cambric handkerchief Avas stained Avith blood. The count’s 
lungs had been affected for a long time. He had been a broken man 
for the last tAvo years, craAvling about in the sunshine, sympathizing 
with his Avife’s hypochondriacal fancies, trying cA-ery ncAv rcnnedy, 


TSHMAELITK. 


187 


eveiT variety of treatment — his chief conversation about doctors and 
doctors’ stuti". The shock of his children’s death had stricken him 
down, and a fit of weeping had brought on a violent hemorrhage 
which threatened immediate death. He had been kept alive since 
that attack by careful nursing ; had lived to see his wife stricken l)y 
the dire disease which w*as abroad in the laud, and to see the win- 
dows darkened for her funeral. 

But the doctors gave no hope of his recoveiy. He would never 
leave his room alive. Life was a question of so many days, or i-o 
many hours more or less. 

He looked at his eldest son with eyes in which there was no love. 
He felt no comfort in the presence of this last of his race. He could 
only remember those two whom he had loved, those sons with wliose 
existence there was no association of shame, no memory that meant 
agony, as of that nameless grave at Montmartre. He did not say 
that life was glad to see Ishmael. He tolerated his presence and 
that was all. 

The nursing sister came back i^i’esently and administered to her 
patient. All a^ipetite had gone, but there W'as a prescribed admin- 
istration of nourishment, stimulants, medicine, regulated by the 
clock — a pain and weariness to the victim who longed to shuhle off 
the last of life’s burdens. But he submitted to the sister’s trouble- 
some routine, as a good Chi-istian who felt that his life was not in 
his own hands. His rosary — an old carved ivory rosary that had 
been his mother’s — lay on the coverlet beside his wasted hand, and 
every now and then his thin fingers closed upon the yellow beads 
and his white lips shaped a prayer. 

The last stroke of the funeral bell had died away in the valley, 
the sister had thrown back the Venetian shutters, and the soft even- 
ing light filled the room. There had been but little sunshine since 
the blazing noontides of August — the glorious harvest time. A dull, 
heavy sky had brooded over the land, dense mists had hidden the 
sun, "not a breath of wind had stirred the woodland It seemed as 
if the poison that reeked from the too fertile earth, a land i-ich with 
corruption, had found no escape in the air. Men longed for a hur- 
ricane to sweep that infection seaward, and for a flood to wash the 
tainted ground. 

Baymond Caradec had been sleejung uneasily for more than an 
hour. He opened his eyes and looked up presently with a startled 
air, and saw his son looking at him in the calm evening light. 

“Who is that?” he asked the sister, pointing to Ishmael as he 
si')oke. 

“ It is Monsieur Sebastian, sir, your eldest son.” 

The dying man heard without seeming to understand. His mind 
wandered sometimes in the night, was not always clear immediately 
after slumber ; but ho had a look in his eyes just now which the 
sister had not seen before in them. She had seen that look often 
enough in other faces, and the dull ashen hue of th.e skin, deeix'ning 
to ])m’])le about the lips. A host of summer flies came suddenly in 
at the window while she looked and surrounded the sick man’s head 
like a cloud of incense. Father Bressant appeared in the doorwjjy 


188 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


Just at this moment, and the priest and the sister exchanged glances 
of sad significance. In their country this cloud of flies hovering 
over a sick-bed was deemed a fatal omen. 

Raymond Caradec looked at his son with a strange intensity in 
the dim glazing eyes. He stretched out his thin hand ; he gave a 
faint, half-articulate cry of gladness. 

“Lucien,” he murmured, “pardon! Yes, you smile, you look 
kindly at me— Lucien — friend — brother ! Forgiven ! ” 

And, with that fading gaze fixed on his son’s face, his arms crept 
slowly down the length of the coverlet, the wasted fingers clutched 
1 lie silken folds tightly, convulsively, for an instant ; and then there 
came a faint gasping sigh, the bent fingers relaxed and hung loose, 
the iron-gray head rolled back among the pillows. 

Deluded by the dimness of dying eyes, memory travelling back to 
the far-away time of his youth, Raymond Caradec had mistaken 
his son’s face for the face of his false friend, the friend W'ho had 
fallen by his sword two-and-twenty years before on the sands of 
Bourbon. 


CHAPTER XXV. 

“scattered toward all winds.” 

Ishmael went straight from his father’s death-bed to that new 
mound in the churchyard beneath which his young brothers 'were 
lying. He knelt and prayed and wept beside that grave until the 
moon was high above the wooded ridge behind the chateau, shining 
silvery yonder on the far away reach of barren sands and the distant 
'waters of the bay. It was past eleven wdien he w'ent to the presby- 
tery where he had arranged to spend the night, rather than at the 
chateau, where four tall wax ta23ers were burning in the chamber of 
death, and where a little old notary from Pontorson was busy set- 
ting the seal of authority upon secretaires and drawers, 'v\diile the 
l^riest and the black-robed sister knelt and prayed beside the 
shrouded alcove. 

Ishmael’s first idea had been to start on his return Journey at day- 
break, walking to Pontorson, and there remounting the horse he 
had hired at Fougeres. But Father Bressant urged the necessity of 
his remaining to attend his father’s funeral, and to assert himself as 
his father’s sole heir. 

“ All belongs to you now,” he said ; “the iDortion which you re- 
nounced and the 2 )ortion that would have gone to your brothers.” 

“ If it were a thousand times as much, I would renounce it over 
again to have my brothers,” said Ishmael sadly. “ As for my fa- 
ther’s funeral— well, I suppose I ought to be present, that it is a 
mark of reverence which I ov/e to the dead — to the dead to whom I 
was so much loss than a son, an alien always, an outcast always.” 

He spent a sleepless night in the neat little cottage bedchamber, 
with its tiled fioor and snow-white linen, and jierfume of late roses 
blowing ill at the open lattice ; and he was r^stir early — in the 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


180 


churchyard again, and then at the chateau, where he heard that the 
funeral was to take jdace on the following afternoon. M. Laiiion, 
Mine. Caradec’s brother-in-law, who had come to attend her funeral, 
had gone back to the inn at Pontorson, to return to-morrow on the 
same melancholy errand, and with a faint hope that his wife might 
be left some small legacy. She would in any case succeed to her 
sister’s dot, which had been so settled as to return to Mme. Caradec’s 
^own family in the event of her dying childless. 

Ishmael wandered about the empty rooms, desolate for evermore 
as it seemed to him, since his mind could not realize the idea of any 
other inhabitants than those whom he remembered in that familiar 
place. In the salon all things remained as Mme. Caradec had left 
them. Her basket of tapestry work, her books, a pile of new novels 
in yelloAv covers, her haiii — so rarely touched after she left the fau- 
bourg — the little Louis-Seize writing-table on wliich she had written 
so many letters of egotistical complainings to her sister in Paris. The 
children’s toys w’ere scattered about the house — guns, helmets, all 
the panoply of mimic war, boats, cannon, fishing tackle. In every 
corner Ishmael came upon traces of those two lives now blotted out 
forever. The sight of these things, most of all a cage of white 
mice, and a hutch full of rabbits in the stables, filled him with un- 
speakable sadness. The mice and the rabbits were brisk and gay, 
jumping about in their narrow quarters, with bright, restless eyes, 
while they two, the children he had loved, lay cold and still under 
the churchyard mound. It is just such a thought as this that fills 
the cup of tears. 

He wandered about all day as if in a dream, revisiting spots he 
had known and loved in his boyhood, seeing old faces wdiich had a 
strange look, like a book laid aside, and half -forgotten. 

He could hardly realize the fact that the chateau, with all its sur- 
roundings, its farms and dependencies, belonged to him hencefor- 
ward, although Father Bressant had tried to impress that fact upon 
him. He felt no joy in the idea of possession, or no joy strong 
enough to lift his soul out of the gulf of gloom into which it had 
gone down Avhen he heard of his brothers’ death. It was not until 
after the funeral, when the notary explained his position and its 
rights and duties, that the practical side of his character began to 
assert itself. 

“ Can you tell me wdiat the estate is w’orth?” he asked. 

“ About thirty thousand francs a year,” answered the man of bus- 
iness ; “ but thei’e are accumulations, there are securities worth at 
least forty thousand francs. Monsieur Caradec lived veiy closely 
while he was a widower, and he had put aside the economies of that 
period. He wanted to increase the portion of his younger sons.” 

“Yes, I know he was anxious to do that,” reifiied Ishmael. 
“ Forty thousand ! Do you mean that this forty thousand is at once 
available — money that I can have to-morrow if I want it ? ” 

The little Breton notary looked scared at the question. 

“ It is invested in securities that could be realized on the Paris 
Bourse at a day’s notice,” he replied ; “but I hope you don’t intend 
to speculate. * Your father amassed that money by economy — sou 


190 


AN ISIfMAElATE. 


by sou, I might almost say. And if you are going to jeoimrdize 
it ” 

“ I am not going to throw it into the gutter,” cried Ishmael, his 
eyes shining with a new excitement, an unknown pleasure. “ I am 
not going to eat or drink it, or risk it on cards or dice. But I will 
show you how money can double itself, quadruple itself, multiply 
itself "by twenty. You, in your little towns and villages scattere<l 
among the fields, do not know what money means. For the last 
year I have been pining for capital, were it never so small. INJy 
hands have been tied for want of a few thousand francs. Forty 
thousand is a bagatelle, as men reckon money in Paris ; but with 
forty thousand on hand, and the power to raise more upon Pen- 
Hoel ” 

‘ ‘ Dieu de Dieu,” cried the notary with horror. ‘ ‘ Pen-Hoel has 
never been hypothecated since it was a chateau, since it had a 
name.” 

“ I will not lose the place where I was born, be sure, Monsieur 
Ardour. But I must make the best of my inheritance — the inherit- 
ance that has fallen to me in spite of myself. ” 

Once having begun to consider the position from a practical stand- 
point, Ishmael’s whole mind hardened to the business he had to 
perform. He dismissed all unnecessary servants. He gave the 
chateau into the care of the housekeeper and major-domo, an an- 
cient coujde who had been in the decline of life at the period of his 
mother’s marriage. He made his choice of the horses that were to 
be kept for farm work, the outdoor servants who were to be re- 
tained. Father Bressant went about with him, and heard him give 
his orders, and felt proud of his quondam j)upil. 

“Paris has taught you a great deal more than ever I taught you,” 
he said in his cheery old voice, smiling at the new master of Pen- 
Hoel. 

At the end of that long, patient life, a life of self-suiTender and 
ill-requited toil, there was nothing terrible in the idea of death. 
The good old parish priest had growm familiar w’itli the king of ter- 
rors in many a winter night, when he had travelled far by muddy 
lanes and wind-swept commons to carry le bon Dieu to some dying 
peasant. He could smile and be cheerful this evening, albeit he 
had laid the master of Pen-Hoel in his last resting-place only a little 
while ago. 

“Paris is a bitter school ; but one learns quickly in her classes,” 
answered Ishmael. “ It is a city that hardens flesh and bdood into 
iron.” 

“You have not become iron,” said the priest. “I know your 
heart is as w^arm and generous as when you used to steal away 
tlirough the stable-gate yonder to carry your dinner to a sick child 
or a feeble old w^oman. And now tell me something about yourself 
as we walk back to my cottage, where dinner has i)een "waiting for 
us for the last hour, and where old Nanon will give me a tine scold- 
ing if she has prepared any dainty little dish in your honor. And so 
you have boon married for more than two years, and have a luetty 
little wife ! I hope she makes you happy.” 


.liV 1811 MAE LITE. 


191 


“She is very good,” said Islimael, somewhat sadly, “ and she has 
improved herself wonderfully since we were married. She had 
been taught nothing. Brought up in squalor and misery, amid 
the most abominable surroundings, and yet she was as white and 
delicate and pure as a rose that has just been flung into the gutter. 

^ You would be surprised at the progress she has made. She plays 
aiid sings exquisitely. Music is her one especial gift, you see. And 
she has learnt to speak like a lady, and to dress herself jorettily.” 

‘■lias she learnt to make you happy, Sebastian? That is the 
main question.” 

“ I have so little time for happiness of a domestic kind,” said Ish- 
mael, half apologetically. “ I leave home early ; I return late. On 
some nights I have my club ; on other nights I have drawings to 
make, quantities to take out— a teclinical business that, connected 
with my trade. And witli Paquerette’s passion for music, she nat- 
urally likes to go, once in a way, to the opera or to a concert, for 
which her music-master brings her tickets ; and so ” 

“ You live almost as much asunder as one of those fashionable 
couples of whom I have read in story-books,” said the old man 
gravely. “ It is not a happy life ; it is not a wise life. I have never 
seen that kind of marriage prosper. Things may go smoothly 
enough for a little while — monsieur and madame see each other too 
seldom to quarrel ; but the end is always misery, sometimes mingled 
with shame. However, you can change all that now. You are a 
rich man, a landed proprietor. Y'ou will bring your wife to Pen- 
Hoel, and you and she can live happily together upon the soil from 
which you sprung.” 

“ Leave Paris ! Live here among these quiet fields ! Sit down 
by yonder hearth, as my poor father sat, and fold my arms, and 
waste my life in one long, dull dream ! No, Father Bressant ; I am 
not made of the stuff for that kind of death in life. I have only 
just begun to understand what my work is like, to see my way to 
leaving my mark upon that thriving, bustling city, which gave me a 
home when I was homeless. No ; when my work is done, and my 
hair is whiter than yours, I will* come back to my gite, like the 
hunted hare. I will sit down beside the old hearth, and my wife 
and I will talk of the days of our youth. But in the meantime I 
must carry out the scheme of my life for good or evil. Do you 
know. Father Bressant, that, aided by the capital left yonder by my 
poor father, I can see my way to a great fortune ? ” said Islimael, 
talking more freely of himself and his prospects to the friend of his 
boyhood than he would have talked to any other man living. ‘ ‘ My 
patron and almost partner is an honest man, but a poor man. He 
has no capital — is content to carry on from hand to mouth, pay 
wages and work for other people. But he has friends — a friend at 
court. His foster-brother, who once made mud pies with him in a 
little village on the Marne, is a man high in the confidence of the 
emperor, a man who knows what the future of Paris is to bo long 
before it is known to a mortal outside his own cabinet. Prom this 
genlleman my patron has heard of a plan for the reconstruction of 
iialf Belleville — old streets to be pulled down and converted, new 


11)2 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


bonlevarcls to be built upon waste places. Forty thousand francs 
invested in the imrchase of land now will mean (piadruple value a 
year hence ; and I mean to invest every sou, to raise money on Pen- 
Hoel, if necessary, in order to profit by this chance. And then my 
poor, pale Pacpierette can play the lady, and can wear silk gowns, 
and sing in a salon full of guests, and be praised and admired to her 
heart’s content,” he added, to himself rather than to the priest. 

“ Will it be an honest act, Sebastian, this purchase of land uj^on 
private information ? ” 

“ Why not? "We shall buy the land at its current value — ^buy in 
market overt. The future value is our speculation. All our intel- 
ligence, all our industry will be brought into the common fund. 
We shall not make a fortune without having worked honestly for it. 
My life must be spent in Paris, father ; but I will bring my wife to 
Pen-Hoel sometimes for a holiday. It is only a journey of a day and 
a half now. I will bring her to see this house in which I was born, 
and the best friend I ever had in my life.” 

The two men clasjred hands ; the younger full of pride and hope 
— pride in his own strength, hope in a future to be carved by his 
own hands ; the elder, benevolence embodied. They spent the even- 
ing together beside the wood fire in the presbytery parlor. The Se])- 
tember night was damp and chill, and those blazing logs made the 
room gay and pleasant. They talked together till the night wais 
late, Ishmael giving his old friend a faithful history of his three 
years of Paiisian life. 


Ishmael left the village next morning, remounted the horse he 
had left at Pontorson, and rode into Fougeres in time for the after- 
noon diligence. From Fougeres to Paris, by road arrd rail, was a 
jorrrney of fifteen hours, arrd there were gray streaks of morning 
light behind the roofs and steeples of Paris as the train crossed the 
bridge at Asni^res. It was past five o’clock when Ishmael arrived 
on foot in the quiet little street of Menilnrorrtant. But the habits 
of the house he lived in were of *the earliest, and the portress, who 
occupied a den at the Morice menage, and acted as feirrme de peine 
for the whole house, was washing the doorstep, with a liberal ablu- 
tion of the footway in front of the threshold, wheir Ishmael came to 
the door. 

He gave her a friendly nod as he was going uirstairs, when tire 
woman stopped him. 

“The key,” she suggested, making for her den, where she had 
custody of the lodgers’ keys and letters. 

“ The key ? ” he echoed in a surprised tone. “ But inadame is at 
home, is she not ? ” 

The portress shook her head, thrust the key into his hand, and 
turned back to her pail and her mop, as if anxious to escape irrter- 
rogation. 

“Madame out, and at srrch an hour in the morning ! ” exclaimed 
Ishmael, staring at her, key in hand, stirpefied after the long journey, 
the wakeful, agitated night. 


AN ISmiAELITE. 


193 


“But yes, monsieur; maclame went last night. You will find a 
letter.” 

“Yes, yes ; without doubt,” he answered, in a different tone; re- 
^ membering in an instant how he had told his wife that she was to 
go and stay with Lisette if she felt dull and lonely. No doubt she 
had felt lonely, and she had gone to Lisette. His "first imjnilse was 
to go straight to the Rue Franche-colline, without going upstairs 
at all. But he had his valise, and there was a letter ; so he went 
upstairs. 

How empty and desolate any house looks to which a man returns, 
expecting to find wife and kindred, and ‘finding no one ! What a 
dreary aspect the very chairs and tables put on ! What a sense of 
ill-usage, disappointment, vexation takes hold of a man, were the ab- 
sence only temporary, the time of waiting only a question of an hour 
or two ! This morning, in the chill, gray light, the Egyi^tian ctode- 
labra, the bronze sphinxes stared at Ishmael, with an ominous^lbok 
— the closed piano— swept and garnished — not a vestige of those 
scattered sheets of music, that untidy portfolio which had often 
vexed his soul — the bedchamber, wdth the alcove closed — the armoire 
open, and empty of all those fineries w'hich had filled it to overflow- 
ing of late. The rooms looked as if their mistress had left theni for- 
ever. Strange that she should make such a clearance in order to go 
and spend a few days with Mine. Moque. 

The letter he had been told of lay on the mantelpiece in the bed- 
room. He opened it without any foreboding. He did not doiibt 
for an instant that it would confirm his supposition as to Paquerette’s 
movements. The words which ho read there were like a bolt falling 
from heaven in the midst of calm and sunshine. 

‘ ‘ I have left you forever. Do not seek to know wLere I have 
gone. If you follow me, if you find me, the end will be death for at 
least one of us. I will kill myself rather than see you in your just 
anger. Yes, I know that you have been good to me, a thousand 
times too good for the little that I am worth. I know that I am un- 
grateful, base, abominable, wuckedest among wicked women. But 
I cannot hel23 myself. I believed once that I loved you. You were 
good to me, and I looked to you for help, and I was at peace— safe, 
happy in your company ; and I thought that was love. Falsehood, 
all that ! I never knew what love meant till I met the man to wdiom 
I have given my heart and my soul, my honor, my hoiDe of heaven, 
all that I have to lose in this life and the next. Think no more of 
me ; or think of me only as a worthless w’oman wdio darkened your 
life for a little wdiile. 1 renounce all claim upon you. If you find 
one worthier of you, marry her, and fear not. I will never stand up 
and say, ‘I am his wife.’ If there were any law' which would break 
tlie bond between us I w'ould accept that law as a blessing to you 
and me ; but they tell me that in France marriage means forever. 
I w'ill never call upon the law to avenge me if you can find yourhap- 
I)iness elsewhere, as I have found mine. 

‘ ‘ Forgive — forgive— forgive — 

“ PAQUEliETTB.”" 


3 


194 : 


AlSf ISHMAELITE. 


She was gone — fled from him forever — false wife — dishonored — 
shameless — her own hand confessing her infamy. But with whom 
had she so fled ? Who was the traitor ? There was not much room 
for doubt. The only men he had ever trusted or admitted to his 
home were Vielbois, the little old music-master, and Hector de Val- 
nois. It was in Hector, therefore, his friend, his comrade, his con- 
fidant, the man who saved his life on the fatal fourth of December 
— it was in him he had to find his wife’s seducer. 

“It is always the husband’s friend,” he said to himself bitterly. 
“ I ought to have remembered my mother’s history. An example 
so near home ! What should warn a man if not that ? And yet I 
trusted them both. I believed implicitly in her innocence, in his 
honor.” 

He did not stop to break liis fast by so much as a cinst, and a 
glass of wine ; he did not stop to plunge his burning head into a 
basin of cold water. With the stain of travel still upon him, he left 
the house and started for the Hue de Grenelle. A fiacre passed on 
its way to the railway station before he had gone very far, and he 
hailed the man. 

“ Rue de Grenelle, a hundred and twenty-five, as fast as you can 
go.” 

The carriage rattled off toward the Bastile, along the Rue St. An- 
toine, across the Pont Neuf, by the Rue des Saints Peres, and into 
the quiet of the grave old quarter. Valnois’ apartment was in a 
house at the end of the street, near the Invalides. The masons were 
going to their work at the new church of St. Clotilde as Ishmael 
drove by the Place Bellechasse. The twin towers, with their croch- 
eted spires, were rising amid a network of scaffolding. Even in 
the midst of his trouble the keen eye of the artist-workman glanced 
at yonder pile with a momentary interest. 

The historical hotel had an old-world look as Ishmael entered the 
paved court, ornamented with great green tubs in which bloomless 
orange trees and great bushes of box made a show’ of verdure. The 
stately entrance was sheltered by a marquise in iron and glass, under 
which the flyman drove his fiacre. Ishmael had been to the house 
many a time before to-day. He had breakfasted with Valnois and 
some of liis literary friends— had discussed the aspect of public af- 
fairs in an atmosphere of coffee and tobacco, in the languid heat of 
a room with velvet-curtained windows, padded doom and a wood 
fire. He had sympathized with his friend’s dreams and had been 
proud of his success — had believed in him as the poet of the future, 
an undeveloped Musset, a Victor Hugo in the bud. 

Was M. de Valnois at home ? he asked. No, the porter told him. 
Monsieur had gone out half an hour ago, doubtless only for a short 
time, since he had left no instructions. His key was there. Would 
monsieur like to go up and wait in the salon ? The porter knew 
Ishmael as a familiar friend of Valnois, who had a very easy w’ay 
with all his friends, and in his small way kept open house as it 
were. His hospitality was a question of coffee and cigarettes — of a 
glass of fine champagne or vermouth, but it was freely given always. 
Men were going in and out of his rooms all the afternoon, and in 


AH ISHMAELITE. 


195 


the evening lie went out himself, to return long after the porter’s 
first sleeji. This early exit of to-day was an altogether exceptional 
event. 

“ I don’t know what fly has stung him,” said the porter, when 
Ishmael had gone upstairs with the key, “ to go out at seven o’clock 
in the morning.” 

The porter’s wife shook her head. 

“ He took a portmanteau with him last night, and he told me he 
should be away at least a week,” she said. “ I believe that he lost 
the train, and that there was some one with him when he came back. 
I caught a glimpse of a figure slipping round the corner of the stairs 
while Monsieur Valnois stood waiting for his candle and key, and I 
believe it was a woman.” 

Such a thing could not be, jirotested the porter. It was not within 
the limits of belief that any impropriety of that species could be 
enacted under that roof, he being there to defend the sanctity of that 
honorable house, a house which was still rich in the relics of saintly 
occupation, a house which had been the dwelling-place of a mon- 
seigneur, a piince of the church, whose violet robes had swept those 
passages. No, the porter could not think it. He knew that M. de 
Valnois was lax in his notions, even to Bohemianism ; but however 
broad a man’s ideas might be, he must know how to respect a house 
in the Rue de Greiielle, between courtyard and garden, a house of 
the old nobility. 

While the porter and his wife were arguing this point Ishmael 
opened the door on the entresol and went into his false friend’s 
salon. He had some idea of waiting for him there, bearding him in 
his own den. He half expected to find his guilty wife there in hid- 
ing. He had hardly considered yet what those two sinners were 
likely to do, and how imj)robable it was that Valnois would attempt 
to hide another man’s wife in his lodgings — how much more likely 
that they too would fly far from Paris, from France even. 

And yet it must needs be difficult for Valnois to expatriate him- 
self. He lived ]>y his pen, the pen of the journalist, the ephemeral 
writer, who treats of subjects fresh in the minds of men, the novel- 
ties of the day — like the articles de Paris in the shops on the boule- 
vard — who catches folly as it flies. 

Ishmael stood in the midst of the room motionless, his eyes. flam- 
ing with anger like a tiger in his den. The atmosphere was hot and 
close, tainted with sickly odors of jockey club, the last fashionable 
l^erfume, of coffee and wine. The velvet curtains hung over the 
narrow windows ; there were embers still glowing on the hearth, a 
scent of burning wood. The table was scattered with the debris of 
a hasty meal — a dainty little china coffee-pot and Oriental cups and 
saucers, half a bottle of claret without a cork, a couple of glasses, 
the remains of a perigord pie in a tenine, a damask napkin flung 
U}:>on the table, half-burnt cigarettes and ashes scattered among 
jilates and glasses — confusion — disorder — the indications of a meal a 
rimiu'oviste — two chairs pushed from the table opposite each other. 

Ishmael plucked aside the velvet curtain and flung open the win- 
dow, stifled in that tainted atmosifliere, charged with perfumes and 


190 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


wiiie and the faded air of a closed room. De Yalnois had not been 
alone last night. He had supped in company. What if the com- 
pany were still there ? 

The door of the next room stood ajar. Ishmael listened for a 
sound from within, were it only the half-suppressed breathing of a 
terrified woman. But there was nothing— not a breath. He heard 
the orderly footfall of a gendarme on the pavement of the street, the 
distant cry of a hawker, the bass roll of heavy wheels far off in the 
awaking city, and the clink, clink, clink of the mason’s hammer 
yonder in the Place Bellechasse ; but from within not a sound. And 
yet he could not believe that the room was empty. She was there 
—she held her breath — she waited, aware of his presence — hiding, 
praying for her lover’s return — ho2:)ing that of those two one would 
be slain, and that one her husband. He threw open the door and 
went in. Oh, what a dainty room ! — all the jn-ettinesses and conceits 
and follies .of a petit maitre, the abbe of Louis Quinze, the incroya- 
ble of the Directory, the gandin of the Empire — the fopling and 
spendthrift of all time — the same always. Then a wild rage seized 
upon the strong man. He laughed long and loud, with the harsh, 
horrible laughter of a distraught brain. When man’s evil passions 
come to boiling-point they have a power to intoxicate compared 
with which the drunkenness of wine or of opium is a feeble thing. 

“Are you there, pretty one ?” he cried. “Yes, I understand now 
why you chose this one rather than me — for his fine clothes, his 
dainty ways, his white hands, his perfumes and kid gloves, and am- 
ber-handled canes, and velvet collar, and varnished boots — those are 
the qualities for which women like you value the things you call 
men. Come out of your hiding-place, infame.” 

She was not there ; but as a fatal sign and token of her guilt, 
trailing over the back of a chair, hung the cashmere shawl which 
her husband had given her in the first flush of his growing pros- 
perity — the dark-red shawl with its Indian border of palm leaves. 
How proud he was the day he bought it for her in the great shop on 
the Boulevard des Capucines ! What delight when de unfolded the 
shawl and wrapped it around his wife’s graceful shoulders. He 
could recall her little cry of rapture even now, as he stood white 
with rage before this damning proof of her shame. Was she not 
thei'e, even yet, there in hiding ? The shrouded alcove with its 
curtains of damask and lace mingled in an artistic confusion — 
massive sweeping folds of crimson brocade half hidden under a 
foam of old Flemish guipure ; plenty of cover here for guilt to hide 
in. Ishmael plucked savagely at the luxurious drapery plucked it 
once, twice, thrice, till he wrenched the curtain from its hold and 
left the slender fabric of gilded woodwork bare. Then, with one 
sledge hammer blow of his clinched fist, he smashed the baldaquin, 
which tottered and fell to pieces like a baiTe^^-sugar temple. No, 
there was no one hiding in the sybarite’s alcove. But the rage 
of destraction had taken hold of Ishmael. There were no bounds 
to his passionate scorn of all this finery, this unmanly luxury which 
seemed the outward visible sign of hidden vices. There were no 
bounds to his hatred of the man who had deceived and dishonored 


AN miMAELlTE. 


107 


him. He kicked over the slender marqiieterie toilet table, all smil- 
ing with loves and graces, and comely masks, and garlands of i*oses, 
and cloven-footed satyrs, lurking among Cupids. He set his heel 
upon the mirror which had reflected that false face. He hurled 
over the bonheur du jour in amber-tinted satin-wood and ormolu, 
lined with sky-blue moire, stuffed with love-letters, loaded with 
bibelots in porcelain, gold, and ivory. The work of destruction 
lasted but a few minutes, during which Ishmael, in that chaos of 
bric-a-brac, dashed about' him like a wild beast in a jungle. When 
all was done he rushed from the room, leaving behind him a trail of 
sliattered furniture, a confusion of ivory hair-brushes, broken per- 
fume bottles, papers, books, neckties, opera hats, strewed over the 
Persian carpet like the debris of an earthquake. 

It had given him a transient relief to work this ruin — just as a 
man with a racking toothache is solaced for an instant or so by dash- 
ing his head against a wall. But when the thing was done, he was 
no nearer real revenge than he had been before. He had only grati- 
fied the fierce rage of the moment. 

He went back to the little salon, white, breathless, after that con- 
vulsion of anger. He sat down at the table, and among bottles and 
glasses and the fragments of last night’s meal, he wrote with a pencil 
on a leaf torn from his pocket-book. 

‘‘I came here to kill you, if I could, or to be killed by you. I 
will not rest day or night till the wrong you have done me has been 
washed out with blood— yours or mine. Do not think to escape me 
in France or out of France. The sea is not wide enough to part us. 
The world is not big enough to hold us both. Go where you will, I 
can follow. My father killed the man who stole his wife. I am a 
stronger man than my father, and I have less to lose. If it is in 
our race — a hereditary doom — to be unhappy in our wives, it is also 
in our race to revenge our wrongs. Where will you meet me, and 
when ? Let it be at once ; the sooner the better, lest I should have 
time to forget myself and strike you in the open street. I should 
not like to do that, for you once 'saved my life ; but it is well you 
should know I am a desperate man.” 

He stuck his challenge in the frame of the looking-glass, where it 
could hardly fail to catch De Valnois’ eye on his entering the room. 
The other side of the glass was choked with notes, cards, invita- 
tions, but this side was clear, save for that ominous scrawl, rough- 
ly written in a big, firm hand. 


CHAPTER XXVI. 

“their roots shall be as rottenness.” 

The fly was waiting under the marquise in the quiet old courtyard 
which had seen so many entrances and exits ; but perhaps ainong 
all goings in and comings out, even of stately hearse with violet 


198 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


velvet trappings and nodding plumes, and solemn croqTie-morts and 
bare-headed mourners, none more ominous, more tragical than this 
departure of Ishmael in the quiet autumn morning, with the hot 
thirst for blood in his heart. The wdiole nature of the man seemed 
to have changed within a couple of hours. The deadly pallor of his 
face, the sombre fire in his eyes altered his outward asi^ect almost 
l^ast recognition ; but the transformation within was much more 
awful ; and he himself w^as keenly conscious of this change within 
himself presently, as he drove past the church of St. Clotilde, and 
heard that clink of the mason’s hammer which had been the music 
of his daily life, the rhythm of happy labor, and bethought himself 
that it never more could have the same cheery sound in his ears. 
There w^ould always be a hideous memory coming between him and 
his daily w’ork. 

He had loved these two, and trusted them implicitly, wuthout a 
thought of ytossible evil, had believed in them as he believed in God 
— first in the woman whom he had saved from a life of sordid misery, 
next in the man, his friend, who had given him a refuge and shelter 
from the hail of bullets on the night of the barricades — the man 
whom he reverenced as a genius, a creature of a superior clay, a 
being to whom falsehood and treachery must needs be impossible. 
And this w^oman had forsaken him ; and this man had dishonored 
him. The demon that was aw'akened in his soul made him a new 
man. He felt the change in his own nature — felt this aw^akeniiig of 
evil passions, and wondered at his own wnckedness. 

“ Would it be murder to kill him, if we two were together and 
alone ? ” he asked himself. “If it were three times murder I should 
do it. God keep me from meeting him till we can face each other 
on fair terms. I could not hold my hand. If I had found him in 
that silkeu nest yonder I should have slain him with my clinched 
list, or beaten in his brains with the first weapon that came to my 
hand. I can understand now how murder comes about.” 

He told the man to drive to the Eue Franche-colline. He wanted 
to see Lisette, and to get from her any knowledge which she might 
have of his wife’s flight. She must know something ; and be it 
much or little, it was for him to drag that knowledge out of her. 
She would lie, of course. She had been trained in the right school 
for that, he thought bitterly. After this should have been done, he 
had to think of seconds for that meeting which he believed that 
Valnois would accord him. His acquaintances of the clubs belonged 
to the working classes for the most part; but there were among 
them a sprinkling of journalists, litterateurs in a small way, men 
who lived, or starved, by their pens — and such as these De Valnois, 
Bohemian and journalist, could not refuse to meet. There was no 
chance of finding these men till the evening ; and in the meantime 
it was his false wife whom he wanted to find. 

The Eue Franche-colline was very quiet at this hour. Everybody 
wdio had any work to do in central Paris had gone to do it, leaving 
this world of the outskirts dull and empty of aspect. The char- 
cuterie had its usual ornamental air, an example of decorative art as 
applied to the varieties of pig meat— dainty knuckles of ham in junk 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


100 


paper frills, golden '\^dtli breadcrumb, or shining with rich brown 
glaze, festoons of sausages or black -pudding, sardine boxes, pies in 
crocheiy cases, truffled cutlets ready for the frying-pan, cheeses 
savoring of distant provinces, reminding the exile of his native bourg, 
breathing the odors of rural muck-heaps and arcadian pig-styes. 
The charcutier was sitting in a corner of his shop, si^elling out a 
newspaper, waiting the cheerful hour of the midday pot-au-feu, the 
fumes of which stole gratefully to his nostrils from an adjacent 
kitchen. Ishmael went straight to the first floor, with only a pass- 
ing glance at M. Moque. He went up the wretclied little staircase, 
screw’ed into a corner of the shabby old house, where all had been 
sacrificed to the width and grandeur of the shop, and knocked at the 
door of Lisette’s ai^artment, tolerably sure of finding her at home at 
this hour of the morning. 

She did not cry to him to come in with her usual shrill readiness, 
but after a jjause of at least a couple of minutes, she opened the door 
and appeared on the threshold, in a peignoir of dubious freshness, 
a i^eignoir de fatigue. 

‘ ‘ You, Mpusieur Ishmael ! Great heaven, you are back then, and 
so soon.” 

“ So soon, and yet too late,” he said. “ Yes ; I came back at day- 
break this morning, and I have come to ask you what you have done 
with my wife ? ” 

“ What I have done ! ” cried Lisette, with a slightly over-accen- 
tuated air of surprise. ‘ ‘ Why, Paquerette is safe and sound at 
home, I suppose. Where else should she be ? ” 

“ She has left her home forever. She has boldly avowed her 
guilt. There is another man whom she loves as she never loved 
me. That was all a mistake, a delusion. She has taken more than 
two years to discover her error of judgment ; but the revelation is 
complete, now that it has come. And she has left me to follow the 
lover she prefers. You must have known this, Lisette ; you must 
have seen this coming. You women have the eyes of a hawk for 
each other’s follies, and a woman is not demoralized all at once. 
Paquerette was pure and true when I married her, pure and true 
when she wept for our dead child. How has the change come ? 
Why ? I have never ill-treated her ; I have always been the same 
to her.” 

Lisette shrugged her shoulders, with a provoking air of knowing 
the world, and being above it, indifferent and superior to the pains 
and follies and sins of other people, by force of experience— as a 
cynic irhilosopher of a century old might have been. 

“ Who knows how these changes come, ever ? ” she said. “ They 
always happen unawares. Yes ; we all know how good you w’ere to 
your wife. The same always — perhaps too much the same. The 
men women like best are the men who beat them one day and take 
them on their knees and call them pet names the next. We want 
emotions, we others. We want to tremble and to weep sometimes, 
and to be soothed and consoled. Would you care for your dinner, 
do you think, if you were never hungry ? You treated your wife 
as if sire was a little girl, giving her nice gowns and plenty of pocket- 


200 


AN ISUMAELITE. 


money, taking her for a treat on a Sunday, and leaving her to her- 
self all the week ; while your head was stuffed with diagrams, and 
wheels, and figures, and bridges, and markets. That is not the way 
to deal witii a woman, if you want to keep her fond and faithful.” 

“Yes, I was a fool,” cried Ishmael, “a besotted fool. I had so 
many things to think of ; I was so eager to make my way in the 
world. And yet heaven knows I was fond of her.” 

“ After your fashion, which is a cold fashion,” retorted Lisette. 

“Tell me,” said Ishmael, growing angry again, after that brief 
interval of softer feeling. “You know where she is — where he is 
— where they two are together. Is it in Paris ? Is it far away ? 
Wherever it is I have sworn to find them ? ” 

“And if you find them, what then ? ” 

“ There will be bloodshed — death for one, or both, or all three. 
My life is ruined. It is like a building — brave, and new, and smil- 
ing in the sunshine ; and because of some flaw in the foundation, 
some weakness in a main wall, the whole structure crumbles, in a 
moment, in a flash, and falls into ruin. I care not who may perish 
in the ruin. Be sure that all shall not escajDe.” 

“ You are going too fast, mon enfant,” said Lisette, looking at 
him with a compassionate air, almost as she had looked at him in 
the wretchedest hour of his childhood, when they lived in that mis- 
erable barrack near the cemetery. “ First, I do not know that your 
wife has run away from you ; secondly, I do not know with whom 
she has run away ; thirdly, I do not know where she is ; fourthly, I 
do not know where he is. Now, then, are you content ? ’’ 

“ No,” answered Ishmael roughly ; “I am not content, because I 
do not believe you. I have the avowal of my wife’s guilt-in her own 
handwriting ; I have seen the evidence of her shame an hour ago 
in Monsieur de Valnois’ apartment — her shawl, my gift, trailing in 
the slime of that profligate den.” 

“ A shawl here and there proves nothing ; they make such shawls 
as that by the hundred,” said Mme. Moque, unable to conceal her 
contempt for a cashmere of five hundred francs, she who had en- 
joyed the reversion of an Indian shawl that cost five thousand. 

“ I tell you I know,” said Ishmael ; “the proof is here,” striking 
his breast. “ It was the instinct of my own heart which told me at 
once where to seek for the traitor.” 

He stood looking round the room with stern scrutinizing eyes, as 
if even here he might find some fresh evidence of his wife’s infamy 
— the room to which he brought her nearly three years ago, a flower 
plucked out of the gutter, a brand snatched from the burning. 

Mme. Moque’s salon had not yet assumed its bourgeois primness. 
There were traces of last night’s supper, there was a work-table 
heaped with old finery in course of reproduction, for the chief occu- 
l^ation of Lisette’s daily life was to recompose her gowns and bon- 
nets, to curl feathers and revivify cambric roses, and clean old silks 
and satins. Altogether, the room had an air of exceeding slovenli- 
ness. The yellow curtains were drawn closely across the alcove, 
doubtless to conceal the disordered couch withiii. 

“ You need not turn up your nose at my salon,” said Lisette, with 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


201 


a vexed air. “One cannot have one’s self and one’s room in good 
shape at nine o’clock in the morning.” 

Nine o’clock ! Was it so early ? It seemed to Ishmael as if he 
had lived through a long day since, he turned the key in the door of 
his lodging yonder; that door outside which Paquerette had 
crouched in the gray winter morning, so piteous, so humble, so 
grateful for a little kindness. 

“I was not looking at your salon. I was only wondering ” 

“What?” 

“ If you had hidden my wife here.” 

“ No danger of that. She has something better to do, if she has 
gone off with her lover than to come and hide herself here. I dare 
say, if it is as you say, they have gone to Havi-e, and are on board 
ship by this time, bound for the New World. If I ran away from 
my husband I would not stay in the old one.” 

“ They are not so wdse as you,” retorted Ishmael, grimly. “They 
were in the Eue de Grenelle last night — I saw her shawl there, I 
saw the relics of the feast. They were there last night. He left the 
house only half an hour before I entered it. When she left, or how, 
I cannot tell you. I w’as too late.” 

“ If you had found her ” faltered Lisette, looking at him curi- 

ously. 

“If I had found her — an hour ago — feeling as I felt then, I 
should have killed her,” he answered; and there was no doubt as 
to the strength of his own conviction upon this point. 

“ What good would that do, except to make a dreadful end of 
your life yonder ? ” said Lisette, gloomily, with a motion of her head 
tow'ard la grande Roquette. ‘ ‘ Life is troublesome enough for all of 
us, but one does not w'ant to cut it short by spitting in the basket.” 

This w^as the popular manner of hinting at the guillotine. 

“ It would have mattered little to me how my life ended just now 
if I had had my way,” said Ishmael. “There is a kind of thirst 
that must be slaked at a crimson fountain. If I had missed him 
and she had come in my w^ay, I would have slain her — poor, miser- 
able thing that she is. Aud now, Lisette, once and for all,” he 
W’ent on, putting his two strong hands upon the woman’s plump 
shoulders with an iron grasji, holding her as in a vise, and looking 
into her face with eyes that tried to read her soul, “ you know some- 
thing about this — much, if not all. You have been her chief com- 
panion ; you have been with her at the opera ; I trusted her wdth 
you ; she has been your guest here, in this room, they two together 
per^iaps — God knows — encouraged and protected in their treachery 
by you ” 

“ How dare you say such things ? ” 

“You must know' w’here they are. Tell me, that I may find him. 
I am cooler now, I j^romise you — yes, on my oath — that I will spare 
her. But with him — I only want to be fair and square with him — 
man to man, face to face, hand against hand. Tell me, tell me, tell 
me ! ” 

Lisette was ashy pale, and trembled a little in that firm grip. 
Those fieiy eyes looking into hers seemed to burn into her brain. 


202 


AN I8IIMAELITE. 


Something she must tell him to satisfy him — no matter what lie, so 
long as it might for one hour pass for truth. 

“I have only heard a word here and there,” she gasped, with a 
faltering, a reluctance that belonged to the highest dramatic art. 
“ You don’t suppose they would tell me what they meant to do — 
me, yoiir friend. I heard them whispering together in the corner of 
an opera box the other night. I could not believe that there was 
anything wrong. I thought they were both in jest — talking mere 
nonsense. It was not till you came here just now — till you told me 
that she had left you — that she had been in the Rue de Grenelle ; it 
was only that instant the whole truth dawned upon me. He was 
talking to her about Brazil — a paradise, he said, where one could 
live for a little money — live as in the Garden of Eden. If she has 
fled with him I feel convinced they will go to Brazil. You had bet- 
ter go to Havre if you want to waylay them.” 

To Havre ! Yes, it was thence the great ships set sail for Southern 
America. He had thought of them, and dreamed of them often in 
his boyhood, when he felt that he was one too many at Pen-Hoel, 
and fancied that it would be a glorious thing to make his esca^^e to 
some larger and wilder region, where he might live by liis gun, 
where he could catch a horse and ride it unbroken, over a world that 
would be forever new. Havre ! yes ; he ought to be at the station 
now, watching for the departure of those vile fugitives, rather than 
fooling here. 

He left Lisette without a word, and drove to the house he lived 
in, where he saw Mme. Morice, told her that he expected a gentle- 
man to call upon him in the course of the day on very important 
business, and begged her to be on the alert for any such visit — the 
charwoman-portress counting for nothing in the way of intelligence, 
and being rarely on the spot when wanted. Mme. Morice would 
kindly tell the stranger that M. Ishmael would be at home at five 
o’clock that afternoon to receive any one who should favor him with 
a call at that hour. Having thus provided against the chance of an 
answer to his challenge, he drove to the railway station in the Rue 
St. Lazare, at which he had arrived on the dawn of that fatal day. 

The station was not as crowded in 1854 as it is nowadays ; but it 
wus the season of sea-bathing, and a good many families were leav- 
ing Paris, frightened away by the talk of the cholera. The midday 
train was filling for Havi’e, Dieppe, Rouen, as Ishmael entered the 
station. He had just time to make his way to the platform— a mat- 
ter of difficulty, since he was not furnished with a ticket — on pre- 
tence of seeing a friend who was to start by that train. He had time 
to pass along the platform, peering into the crowded carriages, to 
see the children on their mothers’ laps, the white-capped bonnes, the 
babies, the bonnet-boxes, poodles, adipose fathers, overgrown col- 
legians, all feverish and loquacious wuth the rapture of leaving some- 
where to go somewffiere else. He looked into eveiy carnage ; but 
there was not a sign of Hector de Valnois or his victim. 

He saw the train move slowly and ponderously out of the station, 
like a thing to which velocity was impossible, and then he went back 
to the booking office and inquired about the next train for Havre. 


AN ISmiAELITE. 


203 


There was none till eight in the evening. He was free to do what 
he liked with himself till that hour — free to go back to his desolate 
rooms and wait for his false fiiend’s answer to his challenge ; free to 
break his fast, which had not been broken by meat or drink since 
midnight. 

When the door closed upon Ishmael, Lisette turned the key shai’ply 
in the lock and drew a long breath, with the air of one who has just 
escaped from a great danger. She went over to the alcove and 
plucked aside the yellow damask with the triumphant manner of a 
woman who feels herself equal to the most tremendous occasion. 

“There, I have got you out of it,” she cried; “but do not give 
me that kind of thing to do too often, Madame Ishmael.” 

Crouching, like a hunted doe, upon the little yellow damask sofa, 
that had served her as a bed in the days of her girlhood, Paqueretto 
looked up at her protectress with pallid countenance and eyes large 
with terror. She had fled there for safety in tlie early morning, 
stealing out of the house between court and garden on tiptoe before 
it was light, her lover opening the doors as cautiqusly as a practised 
burglar lest the jjorter or his wife should be awakened by the scroop- 
ing of a bolt, or should discover that the sanctity of that aristocratic 
mansion had been violated by the shelter of a personage like Pa- 
.querette in the dead of the night. She had come to Lisette’s hoiiso 
before daybreak, and had begged for shelter there till the evening, 
when she was to start with Hector for the sunny south by the mail 
train for Bordeaux, on the way to the Pyrenees. It had been the 
dream of the journalist’s life to cross the Pyrenees ; to see Madrid 
and Cordova, Seville, Granada, the world of Alfred de Musset and 
Murillo, the world that seems to have been invented for poets and 
2 )ainters ; and to take Paquerette with him made the fulfilment of 
that long-cherished dream so much the sweeter. Unhappily M. de 
Valnois had a habit of mind and body which he believed to be a 
I)art of the j^oetic temjDerament. He could never bo in time for any 
apjjoiiitment with man or woman. Unpunctuality was engrained in 
him. Thus having planned to meet Paquerette in the station on the 
Boulevard de rH623ital, in time for the Bordeaux mail, he arrived 
there just ten minutes after the train had started, and found Pa- 
querette in the great bleak waiting-room, pale with flight. What 
was she to do ? where was she to go ? She wanted to fly from Paris, 
to be beyond the reach of her angry husband. She had left a letter 
on the chimney-j^iece telling him of her flight. He would be back 
early next morning. He had told her so in his letter received that 
afternoon. 

“You should not have written about these follies,” said Hector, 
rejDroving her in his airy way, as if she had been a foolish child. 
“ There is never any need to confess one’s sins except to a priest. 
What shall we do, since the train is lost really and truly ? Will you 
go back to your lodgings and burn the letter, and take some more 
convenient time for our flight ? ” 

He had a knack of putting off things ; was not in anywise a man 
of action. 

But Pilquerette declared she would not go back to that abandoned 


204 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


home of hers for worlds. Who could tell ? Ishmael might be there 
already ; he might have read her letter ; he might be there waiting 
for her like a wild beast in a cage. She reminded her lover also that 
all her worldly goods were in the railway station, packed in the port- 
manteaux which he had bought for her that morning. Every step 
had been taken for their flight, except on Hector’s part that one 
detail of being in time for the train. 

“ If you will not go back to your own apartment, there is no al- 
ternative but to come with me to mine,” said De Valnois, after a 
minute’s reflection ; “but I shall have to take you past the iDorter 
unawares, for he is a cuiious person, with a prejudice against your 
too-enchanting sex.” 

And now in the chill daylight, the dread to-morrow, the time of 
reflection, of remorse, of passionate unavailing regret, Ishmael’s wife 
was in hiding with her friend and confidante, Lisette Moque. Yes, 
Mine. Moque knew everything ; had tried to stem the toiTent of 
guilty passion ; had given good advice ; but had never refused to go 
to the opera with -the lovers, to eat ices at Tortoni’s, or to sup at a 
popular restaurant. She had seen them sliding down the fatal slope, 
had tried to pluck them back, and, failing that, deemed it a virtue 
in herself that she had not abandoned them in their sin — that she 
was ready to be their friend still, in spite of everything. 

It had been a week of fever, the time of Ishmael’s absence. The 
Palais de Cristal was closed for a general painting and smartening 
and restoration. Lisette had been free to go where she liked with 
Paquerette. Ah, what drives they had had in the moonlight, the 
great harvest moon shining upon them, seeming to countenance 
their guilty love by that plenitude of glory. The perfect beauty of 
those September nights seemed a part of their being. What had 
they to do but love each other in a world where all was so lovely — 
to love as the birds love ; to turn to each other with tremulous lips, 
impelled they knew not bow, as the wind-driven flowers seemed to 
kiss each other in the woodland ? 

And then it was a season of terror and strange excitement, this 
year of war and pestilence. Prom afar there came the tidings of 
conquest and bloodshed, and men’s minds were on the alert, expect- 
ant of a mighty ^uctory yonder, a victory the news of which was to 
convulse Paris only a few days later. And while far away in the 
East the sky was red with the fierce light of battles, here at home 
there was. the darkness of the gTave, and men’s talk was of sudden 
death. Who could tell where the hand of the slayer would fall 
next ? One lived on the brink of a precipice. Not to be happy to- 
daj was perhaps to lose all chance of bliss forever. To-morrow one 
might be lying under the cold, damp ground — out of sight of yonder 
mellow moon — a prey to the conqueror worm. 

Perhaps it was this fever. in the air, this breath of the ^'►estilence 
and ever-present terror of death, that impelled Paquerette’s light 
feet to the edge of the abyss, that made her oblivious of honor, 
duty, gratitude, truth, religion, for the sake of a low voice breathing 
poetic words in her ear, a gentle hand toying with her liair, eyes 
that looked into hers, shining like twin stars under the starlight. 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


205 


O, liappy nights, which seemed as innocent as the loves of Titania 
and her sister elves, jet meant the rnin of two lives, a blight npon 
two yonng souls. How sweet they were ! How sweet, amid the 
glades of Saint-Germain, in the lamplit supper-room at the Henri 
Quatre ; the scent of mignonette and roses wafted in from the 
old-fashioned garden, the forest showing dark and mysterious yon- 
der, only a little way from the open window ; happy hours so liglitly 
spent in the arrowy flight of mirthful words, of half-veiled avowals 
of love, across the lighted table ; happy drives back to Paris, when 
the chill breath of morning began to steal across the deepening dark 
of night, and Paquerette nestled closer to her lover’s side for warmth 
and comfort, cherished by that encircling arm, hoping that she 
might die there, after a brief dream of bliss. 

Her sin looked of a different color this morning, as she crouched, 
still trembling for fear of her angry husband, in the shadow of the 
yellow curtains. 

“What would have become of you, I wonder, if I had been as 
wanting in tact as you and that monsieur of yours have shown your- 
selves? ” demanded Lisette. “ Figure to yourself, then, a man who 
cannot be in time for the train, even when he is eloping with another 
man’s wife ! However, thanks to my presence of mind, your hus- 
band will be cooling his heels at the Saint Lazare station, watching 
all the departures for the West, while you and Monsieur de Valnois 
are leaving the Boulevard de I’Hopital for the South — provided this 
clever gentleman does not contrive to lose the train again to-day.” 

He will not do that,” said Paquerette. “ He is as anxious to get 
away from this horrible city as I am.” 

She shuddered as she spoke of the great city, as if its veiy atmos- 
2'>here were pervaded by her husband’s anger — that thirst for ven- 
geance which meant death for her lover, if not for her too. 

“Oh! Monsieur de Valnois is anxious to leave Paris, you say. 
But why ? ” 

“ On account of his debts.” 

“Oh, he is in debt, is he? And is that the capital with which 
you two are to begin life, a-bas ? ” 

“ How do you mean ? ” 

“I mean what are you going to live upon in the South ? Travel- 
ling costs money ; eating and drinking costs money ; even lovers are 
sometimes hungry.” 

“Oh, we shall have plenty of money,” answered Paquerette, con- 
fidently, as if the matter needed no discussion. “ You know how 
clever Hector is. He can always live by his pen — at the other end 
of the world just as well as in Paris. He has nearly finished a 
second volume of poems, ever so much finer than the first, for 
which he was paid so handsomely. The new book will bring him 
a great heap of money, and will increase his reputation as a poet.” 

“ I hope so,” said Lisette, to whose strictly bourgeoise temper the 
jirospect did not appear particularly inviting. 

Poetry was all very well, but she would have preferred something 
more solid, more commercial — a new mustard, a lucifer match, an 
article of daily consumption that all the world might biiy. 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


206 y 

“lie is to call for me in a remise at a quarter past eleven,’’ said 
Paquerette, looking at the clock with an anxious air. “It is ten 
minutes past by your clock. Is that right ? ” 

“Rather slow. It is over the quarter by the right time.” 

“Mon Dieu ! ” cried Paquerette, in an agony ; “ if he should lose 
the train again ! ” 

“I hope he won’t,” said Lisette coolly ; “ but he is a poet, and 
2)oets have their own ideas about time and money.” 

Paquerette came out of the little alcove, tremulous, pale with ap- 
prehension, and put on her bonnet before the glass above the mantel- 
piece — a neat little black lace bonnet, with a wreath of violets. 
Small bonnets had only just come into fashion, and they were very 
small. The emiu’ess had her lovely golden hair for ornament, and 
all other women in civilized Europe, whether with or without golden 
hair, were content to copy the empress’ headgear. They had not 
yet begun to dye their own hair in imitation of that lovely arbitress 
of fashion. Paquerette had a little black lace mantle for her shoul- 
ders over her gray silk gown. It was only within the last six months 
she had asiured to silk gowns. 

‘ ‘ How horrible I look ! ” she said, scared by the expression of her 
face. 

“You look like a lady. The cut of that gown is perfect, though 
it was made by a poor little half -starved workwoman in a garret,” 
answered Lisette, surveying her friend with a critical eye. “ Hark ! 
there is the remise. You and Monsieur de Valnois have your lug- 
gage all at the station — nothing to do but take your tickets and get 
your places in the train.” 

She and Paquerette ran down-stairs. A close carriage was waiting 
before the door, with Hector in it. He had been about Paris all the 
morning, whipjping uj) a little money from his employers in the 
literary line ; making engagements to send letters from Spain to one 
of his papers, to do Sx)anish articles occasionally for his magazine ; 
discussing the terms u^^on which his new volume of i)oems was to 
be produced, and keeping as much as possible out of the way of his 
creditors — the upholsterer, the bric-a-brac dealer, the tailor, hatter, 
perfumer, hosier, printseller, tobacconist — astonishing how many 
trades came into play to provide the mere necessities of a fine gen- 
tleman’s existence. And now he had fifteen hundred francs in his 
pocket, and was ready to start. There was not a moment to lose. 

He had not been back to the Rue de Grenelle. He had not seen 
the havoc that had been made with the furniture, or the challenge 
in the chimney-glass. 

He handed Paquerette into the carriage, and then looked out to 
shake hands with Lisette. 

“ We are off to the sunny South,” he said, “ far away from wurs 
and rumors of wars. We shall never come back to this worn-out 
town, wliere there is not a breeze that has not been jDoisoned by the 
breath of man. Think of us kindly, Madame Moque.” 

Lisette, touched on that sentimental side of her nature w’hich had 
stood a good deal of hard wear, was moved to tears. Her husband, 
more practical, and not less kindly, came out of his shop with a neat 


ISUMAELITE. 


207 


little white paper parcel, tied with the daintiest red tape, such a 
parcel as one only sees in Paris. 

“You will be hungry on the journey,” he said. “I have made 
you a sandwich or two— boar’s head with pistachios.” 

He put his little gift into Hector’s hand and nodded a friendly 
farewell. Lisette ran into the road as the carriage drove away, took 
oft’ one of her well-worn slij)pers and flung it after the vehicle. She 
had forgotten for the moment that this departure was not entitled 
to all the honors of a wedding party. 


CHAPTER XXVII. 

“the rod hath blossomed, the PRn)E HATH BUDDED.” 

It was in the springtide of 1867, year of the gathering of the na- 
tions in the great circular glass house of the Champ de Mars, with 
its gardens and fountains, and external dependencies, all to be re- 
produced on a more gigantic scale eleven years later, just as this 
crystal palace of sixty-seven was a reproduction and extension of the 
old Palace of Industry yonder in the Champs Elys^es. But people 
talked of this exhibition as something unsurpassed and unsurpass- 
able, the culmination and ultimate evolution of the system of Inter- 
national Exhibitions. 

There was one jDerson in Paris who was utterly indifterent to the 
opening or non-opening of the monster glass house on the first of 
April ; one person who thought the whole business an intolerable 
bore, the clink of hammers, the grinding of wheels a burden and a 
weai-iness ; and tliat was a lady who lived in a white-walled villa in 
one of the new avenues just beyond the Arc de Triomphe, and who 
told her friends, with a shrug and a sigh, that her house had only 
one fault, and that was being much too near Paris. 

This singular person, who did not care for international exhibi- 
tions, was a rich widow. Lady Constance Danetree, born in the 
23ui-ple, the daughter of an Irish marquis, man-ied early to a man of 
old family and large wealth, left a childless widow in her twenty- 
third year, and now, in her twenty-sixth, leading a life of j^erfect 
independence in this brilliant, imperial Paris, where she knew all 
the best people and a few of the woi’st, the white and the black 
threads being curiously interwoven in the woof and waiq) of imi^erial 
society — society bent on pleasure as on the chief good in life, society 
debased and enfeebled by an excessive luxuiy, corrupted by ill- 
gotten wealth, society which has been compared to Holbein’s dance 
of Death around the altar of the golden calf. 

Lady Constance Danetree’s mother had been dead ten years. Her 
father was an eccentric old person, a tyrant of the first water. He 
lived on his Irish estate half the year, in a castle near the moutli of 
tlie Shannon, among a tenantry who hated him worse than the worst 
of absentees, and S 2 )ent the other half- in London, where his rej^uta- 
tion had an odor of the notorious marquis best known to this gene • 


208 


AN ISIIMABLITE. 


ration as Lord Steyne, and of that other gentleman familiar in the 
literature of anecdote under the sobriquet of Old Q. As it was not 
possible Lady Constance could rejoice in the society of such a father, 
people hardly wondered that she should prefer Paris to London for 
residence, and the Riviera to Brighton for recreation. 

She had married a rich man without loving him, not because she 
was poor, or because she was driven into his arms by paternal 
tyranny. Lord Kilrush was too indifferent to his daughter s destiny 
to x>lay the tyrant in matters matrimonial. Lady Constance married 
the first respectable man who offered himself to her, simply because 
she hated her home, and thought it a happier condition to be the 
wife of a man of honor, albeit she did not love him, than to be the 
only daughter of Lord Kilmsh. 

During her two years and a half of wedded life Lady Constance 
failed in no single duty, great or small. She made her husband’s 
life supremely happy, so happy that Mark Danetree had no need to 
question the nature of his wife’s regard for him. She was his good 
and true helpmeet, the pride of his heart, the glory of his home ; 
and when fate snapped the thread of his days unawares by an acci- 
dent in the hunting-field, in a ditch on his father-in-law’s estate, he 
died with his hand in hers, his pale lips murnraring broken words of 
gratitude for the blissful life she had given him. 

Mark Danetree had been dead nearly four years, and people had 
almost forgotten that Lady Constance had ever been anything but a 
widow. The condition, with all its freedom and dignity, seemed 
her natural state. She was one of the queens of Parisian society, 
wont where she liked, spent as much as she liked, said what she 
liked, did what she liked, and it seemed to her friends in Prance as 
if she. had been born so. They could not picture her in a state of 
bondage, bowing her neck to the yoke, accepting the mastery of 
father or husband. 

“She’s a delicious woman; but what a devil of a life she must 
have led Danetree ! ” said an Englishman who had never met her 
till the days of her widowhood. He would hardly believe the better- 
informed individual who tried to explain to him that Lady Con- 
stance’s conduct as a wife had been perfect. 

She was beautiful exceedingly, with the grand lines and rich 
coloring of a high-born Irishwoman. Her profile wus classical, and 
the, face, so perfect in modelling, so statuesque in its harmony, might 
have failed to touch the heart of man, had it not been for those lovely 
Irish eyes of deep dark gray, shaded by long black lashes. 

“With such eyes as those a w^oman may do anything,” said a 
Parisian, discussing the lady at his cercle over the inspiring glass of 
absinthe, which w^as the fashionable before-dinner stimulant. “If 
some of your Cocodettes had those eyes they would go further than 
they did.” 

“Pas possible,” replied his friend ; and indeed in those latter days 
of the Empire there w^ere few extremities for the great ladies of Paris 
to touch. They had lived, those grand ladies of the imperial court ; 
they had rubbed shoulders with the demi-monde ; they had sat at 
the feet of Cora and her sisterhood. They dressed, they talked, they 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


20ir 

danced, they sung after the women of whose very names they were 
supposed to be ignorant. Cora and the empress divided the sove- 
reignty of fashion ; and to judge by the style of the women of that 
l^eriod, it would seem that Cora’s influence had the widest range. 
The empress was lovely, graceful, gracious, a woman of exquisite 
taste, but Cora had chic — Cora had the art of astonishing society. It 
was all very well for handsome women to mould themselves upon the 
refined manners of the empress ; but a woman of quality might be 
as ugly as sin and yet attract admiration if she were only bold 
enough to imitate Cora. It was Cora who first taught the women 
of Paris to enamel their faces, to paint their eyebrows and eyelids, 
to draw blue veins upon their alabaster foreheads, to wear a cascade 
of somebody else’s hair flowing down their backs like a horse’s tail. 
It was she who invented short petticoats, Polish boots, chaines Benot- 
tons. Zanita, the pale and elegant beauty of 1854, was dead and 
forgotten ; and Cora reigned in her stead ; and compared with 
Zanita’s refined loveliness, Cora’s coarser charms were as Bubens 
unto Raphael, or as Baudelaire to Musset. 

Lady Constance Danetree lived her own life in her perfect villa in 
the bois, and troubled herself not at all about the follies or the vices 
of the great city yonder ; and the breath of the pestilence left no taint 
upon her. The people she liked best and saw most belonged chiefly 
to the artistic classes. She was a woman of many tastes— painted, 
played divinely, sang a little, but only to her intimates, for her voice 
was an impassioned contralto, with a timbre which seemed made to 
reveal the inmost feelings of the singer’s heart. She never sang friv- 
olous music, and she never sang before indifferept people. She read 
immensely, and liked to associate with her intellectual superiors. 
For her own class she cared litt.le, as a class ; but she had a few 
chosen fnends belonging to the aristocracy of England and France ; 
and in the houses of these friends she met the fashionable world of 
Paris, and saw Parisian life with all its absurdities, all its vices, all 
its caprices, pass before her as a panorama, in which she was but 
faintly interested. 

Her life, albeit she had some friends and a herd of acquaintances, 
was a lonely life ; but Constance Danetree did not dislike solitude. 
Perhaps any other woman in her place -would have invited some 
maiden cousin to share her home, or would have hired a companion. 
But Lady Constance needed no sheep-dog to keep her in counte- 
nance ; and the peiq:)etual society of any one person, however delight- 
ful, would have bored her intolerably. She opened the doors of her 
villa occasionally to her own or her husband’s kindred, entertained 
her guest, or guests, regally for a week or two, showed them all that 
was worth seeing in Paris, made herself delightful to them in every 
way, and never breathed freely till her carriage had driven them olf 
to the station. 

In lieu of human companionship, which is apt to be obtrusive. 
Lady Constance had some canine friends, trained to an obedience so 
2 )erfect, a synqDathy so delicate, that their presence never wearied 
her. Her three friends were Lion, a superb colley, black and tan, 
•W’ith as much nobility in the form of his head as you would find in 

14 


210 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


half the peerage ; Bijou, a soft white Pomeranian, with the eyes of 
a gazelle, and a tender melting nature which seemed always entreat- 
ing to be loved, and Skip, a very perfect being of the fox terrier 
breed, with a j^edigree as historic as a duke’s. These three had the 
entree to every room in the villa, and had never jeopardized tlieir 
privileges by bad behavior ; but Bijou alone was allowed to accom- 
pany her mistress in her. drives and shopping expeditions, as she 
alone possessed that repose of mind which reconciles a dog to lying 
on the back seat of a carriage as motionless and supine as the Esqui- 
mau bearskin on which she reclines. 

Lady Constance, reared in the south of Ireland, daughter and wdfe 
of mighty hunters, was a fine horsewoman, and kept a couple of 
hacks for her own riding — no groom wns ever allow^ed to mount 
either. She rode every morning, and in all weathers — rode early and 
far afield ; and before noon she was generally established in her 
boudoir, reading, writing, practising, as the fancy seized her. She 
received her friends in the afternoon, and was one of the earliest 
to introduce into Parisian circles the thoroughly British institution 
of five o’clock tea ; ce petit five o’clock lunch, as it was called by her 
French friends. 

Upon this sunny afternoon in March, when the almond-trees w^ere 
coming into flower, and when tulips and hyacinths made a blaze of 
color in Lady Constance Danetree’s garden, her salon was not 
empty. Lady Valentine, her most particular friend, a clever maiden 
of forty, a w’oman of the world in the best sense, had just drojjped in 
for half an hour’s chat before her drive round the bois, bringing wdth 
her the last of her proteges, a young Frenchman and a new poet. 
There is always a new poet in fashionable Paris. Every season has 
its chosen bard, declared by the unanimous voice of the dilettanti to 
be the coming man, author of a very thin little volume of thinner 
verse, printed on chalky paper, wdth carmine initials and engraved 
tail-pieces — and of wEom the French people at large never hear. 

The Vicomte de Pontchartrain w’as the coming man in the salons 
of sixty-seven. He had published his little yellow volume — “ Mes 
Bales ” — and had accomplished a success in half a dozen drawing- 
rooms between the Champ de Mars and the Place de la Concorde. 
His “ Bales ” were short, detached lyrics — brief flights in the fashion 
of Heine — spasmodic — inconsecutive. His flights w^ere mere con- 
vulsions — short bounds into space, landing him nowhere in particu- 
lar, or occasionally in an abyss of bathos. But as his verses were 
audaciously blasphemous, passionate, and charged with obscure 
meanings, the femmes savantes and the pr^.cieuses ridicules of sixty- 
seven raved about him, fought for the privilege of having him at 
their parties, plied him with sweet cakes and tea, flatteries and sym- 
pathy, and did all in their power to feed a self-esteem which had 
long been the vicomte’s particular weakness. He was not the ideal 
poet of the grisette and the Quartier Latin. He did not wear his 
hair long, or affect the unconventional in costume. On the contrary, 
he dressed and demeaned himself with an extreme precision, studied 
mathematical exactness in his neckties and waistcoats, bought his 
hats in London, wore always the correct thing at the correct mo- 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


211 


ment, and was as careful as if a hair’s-breadth too mncli in the width 
of a collar, or the sixteenth of an inch in the length of a coat-tail 
would be sudden death to his pretensions. He was small, jmema- 
turely bald, with eyes that had faded in gas-lighted rooms, a wan com- 
plexion, an aristocratic little nose, and a neat little mustache, so 
slender, so sparse, that the gummed points were as sharp as a pair 
of compasses. He was polite to punctiliousness, courteous, velvety. 
He affected the tone of Versailles and Marly in the days of the 
great king. If his sentiments were peculiar, his manners were irre- 
proachable. Blasphemy was the leading note of his versification, 
but he had never been heard to swear. He had a little language of 
his own when he wanted to be abusive. He had a host of small 
originalities, infinitesimal inventions which passed for a great talent 
in that society of sixty-seven. 

Lady Constance had other visitors this afternoon — Madame Jarze, 
a large matron, and her two marriageable daughters — marriageable 
for the last few years, but still in full pursuit of eligible husbands. 
The father was an official of the Empire, a great man at court, but 
with an income too small for the comfortable maintenance of such 
luxuries as a handsome wife and two attractive daughters. The 
elder girl, Hortense, disappointed and imbittered akeady at four- 
and-twenty, had taken to literature. She was among that modern 
Orphic society which expounded the mysteries of the new poet, pre- 
tended to understand him as no one else could, and was suspected 
of having set her heart upon marrying him. Amelie, the younger, 
who was very fair, very fresh, very pretty, but with a suspicion of 
artifice in the darkness of her lashes, the golden tints in her hair, 
was the more popular of the sisters. She wore innocent little hats, 
rather infantine gowns, and a crop of fluffy curls, frizzling child- 
ishly all over her liead, at a period when other women wore Japanese 
chignons of satiny smoothness. Am61ie suppressed her forehead, 
which was not devoid of intellect, and hoodwinked society with a 
shock of golden curls which came down almost to her eyebrows, and 
imparted a charming simplicity verging on silliness. 

The talk began naturally with the Exhibition, whether it would 
or would not be ready by the first of April. People talked of the 
circular show in the Champs de Mars just as they talk of the weather, 
when there is no other stock subject ready to hand. They talked of 
Mexico and her fated emperor, over whom the shadows of calamity 
were darkening, till all the horizon around him looked black as 
night. General Bazaine and the French forces were on the high 
seas ; while Maximilian, with a handful of faithful followers and an 
army of nine thousand troops, was to all effects and purposes a pris- 
oner in the city 6f Queretaro, hemmed round by the republican 
forces which were growing daily stronger under General Escobedo. 

“ Tins is a sorry end to the happiest thought of this reign,” said 
Lady Valentine, quoting one of the emperor’s flatterers in the polit- 
ical world— partisans who flattered grossly, enemies who slandered 
ruthlessly. Truth had vanished from the political horizon. Every- 
body knew in his heart of hearts that the imperial car was on the 
downward slope. 


212 


AiY ISIIMAELITE. 


“ And wliat has it cost ns, this hajDpy thought ? ” inquired Madame 
Jarze. 

“ Oh, only a thousand millions or so in hard cash and credits, and 
— say the tenth part of the elite of our army,” answered the vicomte, 
who never exhibited any signs of emotion. 

“But you have Marshal Bazaine coming back to you safe and 
sound,” said Constance ; “surely that is some compensation for your 
losses.” 

“We could have spared him better than a worse man,” replied the 
vicomte, misquoting Shakespeare. 

They had been talking for nearly half an hour, and not a word 
had been said about the vicomte’s 23oems. Hortense felt that he 
must be bored, since the only subject that interested him was his 
own talent. 

“ I forget which of Monsieur de Pontchartrain’s poems you told 
me impressed you the most, dear Lady Constance,” hazarded Hor- 
tense, hoping to lure her hostess into a eulogistic criticism. 

Unfortunately Constance had also forgotten. She leaned her dim- 
pled chin upon her forefinger, not a weak chin by any means, but 
round and firm as marble. She refiected for a few moments, her 
dark gray eyes grave and full. The little vicomte gazed upon her 
with as intense a look as those pale orbs of his were capable of, 
gazed and thought what a heavenly way it would be out of all his 
difficulties if this lovely Englishwoman would marry him and let 
him have the spending of her fine fortune. 

“Let me see,” said Constance ; “which of the poems most im- 
pressed me ? Was it that one about the dead dog ? So striking, so 
original ! Two happy lovers are walking along a willow-shaded bank 
by the river in the summer twilight, full of gayety and hoi^e, Avhen 
they come suddenly upon a dead dog — a poor drowned corpse — 
bloated and noisome, and ravaged by crawling creatures that prey 
upon the dead. The description of that poor carrion is so exquisitely 
graphic. And they think that as that carrion is to-day so will they 
be a few years hence — a thing for worms and flies to feed upon — a 
source of foulness and pollution. Yes, I think perhaps that was the 
poem which startled me most.” 

The vicomte was delighted. 

“You have divined my own thoughts,” he said; “that lyric was 
my favorite. I wrote it with my heart’s best blood.” 

“ What a nasty idea ! ” exclaimed Amelie, putting on her baby air, 
“ when ink is so clean — and so cheap ? ” 

“ Cruche,” muttered her sister, angrily. 

“ Yes ; it is a powerful poem — a little brutal, perhaps ; but the 
brutal is now an essential element in poetry,” said Constance mus- 
ingly. 

“And to think that the .world once called Byron immortal,” ex- 
claimed Lady Valentine ; “Byron, who only shocked the sensitive 
upon one or two points. The modern school has gone so far beyond 
him in far-reaching esoteric immorality that Byron has an air of 
liaving written with milk and water. And even in Byron’s lifetime 
yiielley went much further than he. It is the plain-speaking that 


Alf' ISHMAELITE. 


213 


offend, I think,” pursued her ladyship, who was strong-minded and 
of ripe age, and who had no fear of touching a delicate subject. 
“ The man who calls a spade a spade is sure to shock people ; but 
another man may hint in a subtle, between-the-lines way, at things 
that are infinitely worse than spades, and yet printers will print and 
publishers will publish without fear of consequences. By-the-bye, 
vicomte, your verses remind me of a book I read last year — not a 
new book by any means — a book of poems published in the begin- 
ning of the Empire (‘ Mes nuits blanches ’) by a certain Hector de 
Valnois — a very clever book— a book full of strong things, mixed uj) 
with a few absurdities, after the manner of you poets.” 

Pontchartrain’s countenance assumed the blankness of a stone 
wall. He had never heard of “ Mes nuits blanches.” He doubted 
if the book had made any impression in literary circles. 

“ Strange ! ” exclaimed Lady Valentine ; “I should have thought 
you had read all the books of mark written within the century, and 
this really is a book of mark, and I am told was a good deal praised 
in its day. I w'onder the writer never did anything more. Has no- 
body heard of this Monsieur de Valnois ? ” 

Lady Constance had not, nor Madame Jarze, who rarely read any- 
thing beyond the fashion magazines, the Figaro and the Journal 
pour rire. 

“ What a singular coincidence ! It was only the other day that I 
heard of a man who was described to me as the author of ‘ Mes nuits 
blanches, ’ a volume of verse which achieved a great success in their 
day,” cried Amelie, full of animation. “ Such a curious story. You 
know I am always stumbling upon curious stories. ” 

“Or inventing them,” muttered Hortense, with a sinister glance 
at her sister. 

“ You know Monsieur de Keratry, that amusing young fellow who 
brought out a vaudeville at the Varieties last winter? It was he 
who told me all about this forgotten i^oet. He knows him inti- 
mately — in a kind of way.” 

“ Vhiat do you mean by ‘ in a kind of way ’ ? ” 

“ Well, this poor man who wrote ‘ Mes nuits blanches ’ has gone 
down in the world — he does not go into society any longer, lives in 
some wretched hole in the Quartier Latin, in some undiscoverable 
street behind the Luxembourg. But he was once a man of fashion, 
I believe — once handsome, once elegant.” 

“ Like the vicomte’s dead dog, he has had his day, and now he 
has come to the carrion stage, or nearly, I suppose,” said Lady Con- 
stance. 

“Veiy nearly. I’m afraid from Monsieur de Keratry’s description 
of this poor thing’s coat and hat that he must be almos^ as badly off 
as the dog. He is a dyer.” 

“A dyer!” exclaimed Lady Valentine, with disgust. “Those 
]')assionate verses written by a dyer, a man who dyes his dog red one 
day and yellow the next, and sends the poor brute into the street to 
advertise his master’s last new dye. I have always hated Parisian 
dyers since I saw that yellow dog. 1 believe he was of the same breed 
as your Bijou, Constance. Think if such a fate were to befall her ? ” 


214 


AN mmiAELITE. 


“I do not mean a dyer of that kind,” said Amelie, scarcely con- 
cealing her scorn of Lady Valentine’s ignonmce. “A dyer in liter- 
ary circles is a man who touches up — rewrites — or, in some cases, 
writes altogether — another author’s pamphlet, or play, or book. 
That was how Monsieur de Keratry became acquainted with this 
out-at-elbows poet. He had written a delicious little vaudeville, full 
of smart things — but quite unactable — charming songs and duets, 
utterly unsingable. ‘ I should like to give you a chance,’ said the 
manager, ‘ but your play wants licking into shape. You had better 
take it to a fellow I know, who once was a genius — wrote plays, 
poetry, criticism, political articles— and who now does piecework 
for anything he can get.’ Monsieur de Keratry took the hint, and 
carried his play to the poor man in the Quartier Latin, who took it 
all to pieces as if it had been a clock that wouldn’t go, and put it all 
together again in admirable w^orking order.” 

“Wonderful!” cried Lady Constance. “And so that is what a 
literary dyer does. One is a^,ways hearing of new professions in 
Paris.” 

“ Impossible,” said the vicomte. 

He had been looking intensely bored, and even angry, while 
Am^^lie told her story, no doubt disgusted at his own personality be- 
ing shouldered out of the conversation by this literary Bohemian of 
the Quartier Latin. 

“ But, my dear vicomte, I tell you that is,” protested Amalie. “I 
have been relating an absolute fact. For five najDoleons this man 
remodelled oiu’ Mend’s play.” 

“ Impossible,” repeated the poet doggedly, and with infinite dis- 
gust. “A man of honor would never lend himself to such a trans- 
action. WTiat, stand before the public as the author of a work im- 
proved, remodelled, you say, by another hand ? Impossible I ” 

He bristled, he reddened with indignation. Never had they seen 
him so excited, and by a subject which could have no personal inter- 
est for him. He was consumed with the righteous rage of the just 
man who cannot endure the mere thought of evil — of the man whose 
nice sense of honor cannot brook the smallest sophistication. 

“I suppose a poet has loftier ideas about such things than a man 
who writes vaudevilles,” said Amelie, with her innocent air. “ Mon- 
sieur de Keratry seemed to think there was nothing wrong in the 
matter. He would not have told me if he had been ashamed of it.” 

“There are men who are such intolerable egotists that they will 
talk of their own meannesses rather than not talk of themselves,” 
said the vicomte, still indignant. 

He had set down his tea-cup in a tumult of fine feeling, and was 
pacing the room in front of the long plate-glass windows. 

“After all, it can be no w^orse than collaboration,” argued Amelie, 
a young person not easily put down. “I can see no difference.” 

“ Did your friend put this other person’s name on the title-page 
of this vaudeville ? ” asked the vicomte. 

“I think not.” 

“ Of course not,” retorted the poet; “that makes all the differ- 
ence. He accepted another man’s aid, not as a partner in his works, 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


215 


in liis profit, in his fame. He palmed off the talent of another as 
his own — took credit for the thoughts of another man’s brains. I 
tell you once again, mademoiselle, among men of honor this is im- 
possible.” 

The last words came with a serpent-like hiss from his thin lips. 

Amelie shrugged her shoulders as she rose to accompany her 
mother, who was taking leave of Lady Constance. 

Hortense lingered over her adieux to the poet, who was evidently 
out of humor. 

“ You will not forget this evening,” she said pleadingly, looking at 
the sallow, pinched countenance with beseeching eyes. 

Even love itself could not think the vicomte handsome, but Hor- 
tense thought him intellectual, spiritual, patrician, almost divine ; 
and she was not ashamed of her worship. It would seem her pres- 
ent feeling for Paul de Pontchartrain was sincere to agony. 

“ What is there to remember for this evening in particular?” he 
asked, with a blank look. 

Hortense smiled a pained smile, as of one who hides a wound. 

“ Mamma’s Thursday,” she said. “ You will come, will you not ? 
We shall have some very good music to-night.” 

“ I am getting to detest music,” he said, curtly; “ it is the same 
everywhere — Beethoven, Chopin, Schubert. And I have so many 
engagements. It seems to me that it is always Thm’sday.” 

“ You were nob with us last week.” 

“ Was I not ? One lives so fast in the season — and this year the 
pace has been increased from presto to prestissimo. But I will be 
with you this evening, if you really wish it.” 

“ You know that I wish it,” she answered, looking him straight in 
the eyes. 

The look was as plain a confession as the Vicomte de Pontchartrain 
in his character of lady-killer had ever received ; but the day was 
l^ast when such avowals had power to move him. He put on a little 
tender, consolatory smile, and murmured blandly : 

“ Count upon me, dear mademoiselle.” 

He pressed the little hand in its pearl-gray glove, and so they 
parted. 

While the vicomte was being canvassed by Hortense, Madame Jarze 
was applying her own powers of persuasion in another direction. 

I hope we shall see you this evening. Lady Constance,” she said. 

“ All, it is Thursday again ! ” exclaimed Constance. “ How short 
the weeks are in March ! It seems only the other day that I spent 
such a delightful hour in your salon.” 

“ That other day is more than eight weeks ago,” said Amdlie, re- 
proachfully. 

“ And to-night we shall have some particularly nice people,” con- 
tinued Madame Jarze. “ Among them there is some one I want so 
mudi to present to you. You have heard me talk of Monsieur Ish- 
mael ? ” 

Had Lady Constance been strictly sincere she would have said that • 
for the last three months she had heard Madame Jarze talk of no 
one else. 


216 


AN ISEMAELITE. 


“ That is the millionaire, I think,” she said, with her quiet smile, 
a smile full of subtle meanings, “ Yes, I have heard you mention 
him. I have heard other people talk of him too.” 

“ A man has only to make a million sterling, and all the world 
will talk of him,” interjected the vicomte, in his most acrid tone. 
“There is no true sovereignty in this Paris of the Second Empire 
except that of his majesty's money ! ” 

“ It is not on account of Monsieur Ishmael’s money that we care for 
him,” said Amelie, tossing up her head. “ We are not that kind of 
people. It is for his noble mind, his great qualities, the good he has 
done, that we like him. And I am sure, Lady Constance, if you 
only knew as much of him as we do, you would admire him for the 
same reasons. ” 

“ One hears so much of new people and of new things in Paris 
that they are stale in a week,” said Constance, with a languid eleva- 
tion of firmly pencilled brows. “ There is such incessant talk, 
every subject is worn threadbare, and one gets to hate ^reople before 
one sees their faces. At least I do. But I have no doubt this mill- 
ionaire person is perfect, since you all think so much of him.” 

“ I do not think much of him, Lady Constance^” protested the 
vicomte ; “ pray leave me out of it. I think that he is a parvenu, after 
the manner of all other paiwenus ; only he is just a little cleverer 
than most of them — lives plainly, dresses plainly, is not effusively 
generous — does not pose as patron of artists and men of letters — and 
contrives to make his wealth as little obnoxious as possible. But I’ve 
no doubt the heart of the man is bloated with pride.” 

“ He has not an iota of pride,” exclaimed Arnelie, blushing prettily 
with indignation. ‘ ‘ I believe he forgets that he is rich. I once told 
him so, and he only larrghed and said, ‘ At any rate, mademoiselle, 
I do irot forget that I was once poor.’ ” 

“Very neat,” said the vicomte ; and then in a tone of perfect in- 
nocence he said, “ What an excellent adventure this Monsieur Ish- 
mael would be for airy enterprising young lady to marry. In the old 
times, when Louis Philippe was king, it used to be the parents who 
arranged marriages, I am told. The daughters came out of their 
convents arrd were married by family contract. But now young 
ladies are free lances. They have debts like a young man of family, 
and go into society with sword and bow, like the knights of old, to 
make their own conquests, their own captives.” 

‘ ‘ Do you regret the old-fashioned customs ? ” asked Lady Con- 
stance, laughingly. 

“ Not in the least. Society is ever so much pleasanter since young 
ladies have been adventurous ; and I believe the young ladies them- 
selves do better by the new system.” 

Amelie turned her back upon him with an indignant rustle of the 
gi-ay glace flounces. 

“I hope we have said enough to raise your curiosity, and that 
you will come this evening,” said Madame Jarze, sweeping her vol- 
uminous moire toward the door with a mighty rushing sound. 

Lady Constance sighed. 

“ How glad I should be if I could feel curious about anything in 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


217 


this world ! ” she said. “ However, I will come to make the ac- 
quaintance of your Monsieur Ishmael. TVhat a strange name ! He 
is a Jew, I suppose. Paris is choked with rich Jews. The second 
Empire is the restoration of Israel.” 

“Monsieur Ishmael a Jew! Not the least in the world,” ex- 
claimed Madame Jarze. “ He is a good Catholic, and on excellent 
terms with Father Deguerry, of the Madeleine.” 

‘ ‘ Then he has one of the noblest of men for his friend. Au re- 
voir ! ” and with courtesies and little friendly speecJies, Lady Con- 
stance accompanied her departing guests, French fashion, to the 
hall, where a Diana by Pradier and a dancing faun by Lequesne 
showed white against a bank of rose-colored and amber azaleas. 

“She is positively insufferable,” said Hortense, frowning vindict- 
ively, as the mother and her two daughters squeezed themselves 
into the victoria, which was hired two afternoons a week to take 
them for an airing in the Bois, and which bore an almost life-like 
resemblance to a private carriage. 

IShonsieur Jarze’s official income, albeit augmented by various trib- 
utes from complacent tradesmen — tributes which his enemies had 
been known to stigmatize as bribery and corruption — would not 
cover the expenses of a Parisian stable. 


CHAPTEE XXVIII. 

“until the daybeeak and the shadows flee.” 

When Lady Constance Danetree declared her inability to be keen- 
ly interested or curious about anything in this life, she was not giv- 
ing utterance to one of those little affectations with which men and 
women are apt to interlard their conversation, mere parrot-speech, a 
’s ague echo caught from a super-retined age which pretends to have 
outgrown the faculty of emotion. She spoke the sober truth. A 
life which from her cradle had given her almost everything she 
wanted left no margin for wishes or eager curiosity about anything. 
She had steeped herself in the sunlight of life, she had surrounded 
herself with the society she liked best, she had travelled, and seen 
everything she cared to see in civilized Europe. For the vast world 
beyond, the wilderness and mountain, oceans and mighty rivers, she 
was content to trust books and photographs, letting her mind go out 
amid that wonder- world in idle day-dreams, and letting other people 
do the actual work for her. She had stuffed herself with new 
books, new ideas. She knew four continental languages, and was 
not obliged to wait till new theories filtered into English literature. 
She could imbibe them at the fountain-head. 

Perfect independence, ample means, freedom from all family ties, 
had made her life different from the lives of other women. She 
lived faster than others, she never had to wait for her opportunity 
to bide her time. She did not say, “ I will go to Eome in Novem- 
ber, if I can.” She could do whatever she liked, and had only to 


218 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


say to her majordomo, an accomplished Hanoverian, “ Steinmark, 
hear in mind that ]& am to be in Rome on the first of November.” 
Steinmark heard, remembered, and obeyed. He went three days in 
advance of his mistress, carrying a certain portion of her luggage. 

He met her at the railway station, and conducted her to the most 
perfect set of apartments in the city, where she found her books 
and lier music, her x^hotographs and her basket of crewels all in their 
approiDriate x^laces in the salon. Her journey through life in these 
golden days o| her widowhood was like a royal progress. Every- 
body adored her, some for self-interest, many for her own sake, 
simj^ly because she was adorable. 

In Paris her admirers were legion. A beautiful and accomplished 
Englishwoman, of high birth and ample means, who lived in a 
charming house and received on a liberal scale, was sure to be pojm- 
lar. People schemed and intrigued to get a card for Lady Constance 
Danetree’s evenings, and to be seen at one of her little dinners was a 
cachet of good style. Madame Jarze had labored, underground, like 
the mole, for a year before she and her daughters were allowed to 
cross the threshold of that exquisite villa. It had cost her another 
six months of coaxing and di^fiomacy to get Lady Constance to a 
state dinner — a dinner which made a palpable encroachment upon 
M. Jarze’s quarter’s salary ; and now, by dint of a i^ertinacity in 
X')olite attentions which touched the confines of imiDudence, Mine. 
Jarze and her daughters were able to j^roclaim themselves among 
the chosen few — three or four hundred or so — who were Lady Con- 
stance Danetree’s intimate friends. 

Having jjromised to go to Mine. Jarze’s party. Lady Constance 
left one of the nicest houses in the Parc Monceaux, where she had 
been dining at an early hour, in order to keej) her word. She was 
loyalty itself in small things as well as in large. She went from a 
choice and intellectual circle regretfully, to be bored in a frivolous 
crowd ; but a promise is sacred, and she knew that there was a high 
value set Ufion her jiresence in the Jarze household. 

The house in which the Jarzes occupied a second floor was a new 
’ one, painfully and wonderfully new. A large and magnificent man- 
sion of which the rez-de-chaussee was let to a marquis, the entre-sol 
to an actress, the premier to a rich Jew, and the second floor to M. 
Jarze, at about half the rent of a house in May Fair. Above this 
story the inhabitants retrograded in social j)Osition, just as the ceil- 
ings diminished in height, and the plaster cornices and floorheads 
decreased in florid ornamentation, till the edifice was crowned by 
the domesticities of a couple of clerks and their families. 

The Jarze saloon had an air of chilly elegance which stiTick cold 
to the heart of a stranger newly admitted to its hosx')itality. The 
decoration was white and gold, the Louis Quatorze furniture crim- 
son and gold. A few Sevres cups and saucers, a sprinkling of bibe- 
lots, bonbon boxes, perfume caskets, photograph albums, were scat- 
tered on the gilded tables, and stoves to give a home-like air to this 
abode of x)laster-of -Pans picked out with gold. The crimson satin 
curtains were scanty, the chairs were too few, the sofas were hard, 
the rooms were draughty. A magnificent grand i^iano was the chief 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


219 


feature of tlie small inner salon. “A gift from the empress to my 
daughters,” said Mme. Jarze to any new acquaintance, pointing to 
the instrument with her fan. ‘‘ A bribe from the maker, who 
wanted his name introduced at court,” murmured the initiated. 

To-night, when the man-of-all-work, with an air that would, have 
done credit to a groom of the chambers, announced Lady Constance 
Danetree, the rooms were fairly full. People were standing be- 
cause there ^vere no more chairs on which to sit, a state of things 
wdiich pleased Mme. Jarze, as it gave the impression of a crowd. 

A distinguished violin player was just concluding a scena from 
Weber’s “ Euryanthe.” Lady Constance gave her hand to her host- 
ess ^vithout a word. 

“ You are late ; but I knew you would not disappoint us,” cooed 
Mine. Jarze, with the accents of a sucking dove ; and then, in a still 
lower voice, she mui-mured, “He is here.” 

“He? WTio?” 

She had really forgotten. At the dinner, in a great painter’s 
house, the talk had been of the loftiest, and Constance Danetree’s 
mind had wandered far from the regions of millionaire speculation 
in bricks and mortar. She had just been reading Jowett’s “Plato,” 
and they had talked of Greek philosophy and the Greek world. 

“ WTio ? Why, Monsieur Ishmael. He is in the little salon lis- 
tening to Sinori.” 

Constance Danetree turned and looked at the inner salon as at a 
picture, or a scene on the stage. It was divided by a curtained arch- 
way from the larger reception room, and just now the curtain was 
drawn back, and the pillared arch made a frame for the picture 
within. 

There were only three people in the salon. M. Sinori, the violin- 
ist, a man of middle age and fine presence, a handsome Italian 
head, standing by the piano in the light of the candles, with his 
chin upon his violin, looking down at the varnished wood as a man 
looks at a sentient thing which he loves with soul and senses alike ; 
Amelie Jarze, seated in front of the piano, and looking up at a tall 
dark man who stood on the other side of the instrument, watching 
the face of the player, and listening with all his miglit. This tall 
dark man was Ishmael — contractor, engineer, speculator, philan- 
thropist, millionaire, and one of the most famous men in Paris. 

This is what seventeen years of hard work had done for Eaymond 
Caradec’s son. 

What other changes had those years brought about— what changes 
in the man himself ? 

Some change, assuredly. Those years, and the responsibilities 
that had gone along with them, had added dignity to the firm, bold 
brow, with its conquering ridge, and its strongly marked eyebrows 
above eagle eyes. The carriage of the head was loftier than of old. 
He had carried! his head higher, with the air of a man who for good 
reasons scorns his fellows, ever since his wife abandoned and his 
friend betrayed him. Such treatment hardens a man, throws him 
back upon his inner self, develops his sense of his own value. He 
has been treated like dirt ; and he resolves to let the world see that 


220 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


he is not dirt. From the hour of his wife’s elopement, fortune fol- 
lowed every act of Ishmael’s career. He bore a charm, as it seemed. 
His small patrimonial fortune, invested in his own manner, had 
multiplied a hundred-fold. “ The luckiest man in Paris,” men told 
each other ; and they took their schemes and their money to him, 
and deemed fortune certain could they but secure his co-operation. 

For years he had been a master-spirit among men in his own par- 
ticular line. This sense of mastery- -of being always first— had 
given some touch of kingliness to his aspect, his tone, his manner — 
something of that look and manner which is seen in famous war- 
riors, in the men who have lived through such nights and days as 
that of Waterloo or the battle of the Sutlej — men who have fought 
like Clive or marched like Koberts. Peace has its victoiies as well 
as war — its trials — its defeats. 

Ishmael had stood on the bank of the Seine in the gray of a win- 
ter dawn to see a mighty railway bridge, the work of a year, snapped 
asunder, crumbled to ruin — work fresh from the builder’s hand, as 
a sovereign from the mint ; a catastrophe meaning the loss of nine 
or ten million francs to the contractor. 

“ Well, my friends,” he said with a long-drawn sigh, and his hands 
deep in his pockets, “ we must begin it all again.” 

And the next day came the counter-balance, some stroke of luck 
which paid for the bridge. 

A man with such a history seems as much out of place at a tea- 
l^arty in the Champs Elysees as a lion in an aviary ; but Ishmael 
bore himself easily enough as he leant across the piano and watched 
the face of the violin player. 

“Delicious,” he said, drawing a long breath when the last pianis- 
simo chord died into silence. “ How you must enjoy playing like 
that. Monsieur Sinori ! ” 

Sinori smiled upon him, pleased at the nai’ve compliment. 

“ Weber and my Straduarius understand each other,” he answered 
quietly ; putting the violin into its case. 

Amelie’s hands began to wander over the keys and finally settled 
into “ Dites lui,” played with melting tenderness, while eyes of be- 
witching blue glanced shyly upward at the millionaire, from the 
covert of fluffy golden hair. 

But the pretty glance, the languishing melody, were thrown away 
upon Ishmael. Perhaps he had had just a little too much of inno- 
cent childish beauty in his youth. The highly trained daughter of 
the Second Empire could never seem as childlike or as free from 
guile as Paquerette had seemed in those days of the Eue Sombreuil ; 
or if she could, her infantine graces would have served only to recall 
the one great horror of Ishmael’s life. 

“ How well Schneider sings that song,” he said coolly, as he 
turned from the piano. 

“ I want to present you to Lady Constance Danetree,” said Mine. 
Jarze, approaching him at this moment. 

There was a clear space, diameter of a yard or so, in the middle 
of the salon, and hero the two great peo])le met, while society, repre- 
sented cliiefly by elegant nobodies, looked on and admired. 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


221 


They met as royalties meet, a king and qneen among men and 
women, each taller by half a head than the majority of men and 
women around them— each with an air of nobility which dominated 
the crowd. Constance’s perfect figure and grand style of beauty 
were set off by the rich simplicity of her toilet— a gown of dark 
browm velvet, innocent of a vestige of trimming save the nan-oAv 
Valenciennes tucker gathered tightly round the marble shoulders by 
a slim thread of gold. A collet necklace of matchless Brazilian dia- 
monds encircled the round full throat, and this was the only jewel 
which relieved the sombre richness of the lady’s costume. 

“ Comme elle est fagotee ! How odd that no Englishw^oman 
knows how to dress,” murmured Hortense behind her fan, to the au- 
thor of “ Mes rales,” who was sitting by her side in the embrasure 
of a window. 

“I think you should exclude Lady Constance Danetree from that 
sweeping condemnation,” said the vicomte languidly. “ That brown 
velvet is full of voluptuous lights and shadows, and wdth such arms 
and shoulders a woman should never wear anything but darkest vel- 
vet. For the fragile and the attenuated ” — with a glance at Hor- 
tense’s thin arms enveloped in clouds of tulle — “a more airy style is 
admirable, but statuesque beauty requites solid treatment.” 

“I hate solidity,” retorted Hortense. “To my mind grace con- 
sists in curves and undulating movements.” 

The vicomte smiled blandly. 

“ You, who are the very spirit of grace, have a right to be critical.” 

He rewarded his slave with a ci^dl little speech now and then — 
though his general tone was as impassive as that of a Brahminical 
cow — just as a man throws an occasional biscuit to a dog that per- 
sistently fawns u23on him. 

The millionaire and the Englishwoman talked to each other a lit- 
tle, about nothing in jDarticular, as newly introduced peoj^le talk, 
with only the faintest interest, neither knowing of what manner of 
conversation the other is caj^able. Nothing in Constance Danetree’s 
manner betrayed that her mind had undergone a shock of any kind 
within the last five minutes. Not the faintest elevation of her eye- 
brows indicated surprise. Yet she had been as much astonished 
since her entrance into that room as ever she had been in her life. 

Ishmael was in every way the oj^posite of the man she expected 
to see. She was a woman full of prejudices, and there was a class 
of people for which she had a S23ecial detestation. She hated self- 
educated men, and she hated self-made millionaires. The former 
she had always found intolerable in their assumption of intellectual 
superiority to all the rest of the world, the latter- odious in their 
ju-ide of wealth. She had been bored by people’s praise of Ishmael, 
the great contractor — the man to wdiom the Parisian workman owed 
his new boulevards, his palatial barracks, planned with a novel re- 
gard for sanitation ; the man to whom the very four-footed beasts 
were debtors for the boon of being slaughtered under comfortable 
conditions ; the man wdio.se acumen had been a great factor in the 
imjDrovement of hos})ital architecture all over France ; and the man 
who w^as rej^orted to have done more philanthroiiic work on his owm 


222 


AN ISimAELITE. 


account, and in liis own quiet way, than any other man who had 
won fortune under the Second Empire. 

Lady Constance lieard all, believed all— too indifferent, indeed, 
for disbelief — and made her own mind-picture of the great con- 
tractor. 

A short, thick-set man, of course — contractors were always built 
squat, she believed — a man with shaggy, light-colored eyebrows, 
cunning gray eyes, a large, sensual mouth and a heavy jowl ; a 
purse-proud man undoubtedly, given to bragging of the good things 
he had done for himself and the world ; an ignorant man, knowing 
hardly anything outside his own uninteresting business ; a bon vivaiit, 
no doubt, giving himself the airs of a gourmet on the strength of 
newly acquired wealth, finding fault with other people’s dinners, and 
protesting that there were only three men in Paris who could cook 
— a man, moreover, with the stami) of his origin upon him in the 
shape of the carpenter’s thumb. 

And, behold, instead of the short, squat person, wuth bristling 
pepper-and-salt eyebows, she saw standing before her a man of six 
feet two, with darkest brows and flashing eyes, the features of a 
Koman warrior — a man who looked well under forty years of age. 

She measured him from head to foot as he talked to her, with a 
calm and cold survey ; yet her heart beat just a thought faster on 
account of her surprise. For the first time in her life she felt that 
she had been a prejudiced, self-opinionated fool. If a contractor 
could be such a person as this, why object to contractors ? 

“ \Vomen are fools,” she thought, shifting the blame from herself 
to the sex in general. “We are always jumping at conclusions, 
always mistaking our own fancies for absolute facts.” 

She stole a glance at his right hand. Yes, there was the mark of 
the beast. The thumb was too square and solid to belong to a gen- 
tleman’s hand. And then she looked at Pontchartrain, whose white 
effeminate fingers dangled across the elbow of his crimson satin 
chair, and from the hand looked at the small bald head, the slim 
narrow figure. 

“ What a rat the creature looks beside this master-builder ! ” she 
thought ; “ and yet I have no doubt he looks down upon the man 
who once handled a mason’s hammer.” 

She tried to imagine the man to whom she was talking clad in a 
blouse, hewing stone, laboring among other laborers ; but picture 
him however she pleased, she could only see him as a king among 
men. Nobody had told her that there was good blood in his veins. 
That tradition of a noble origin died out among Ishmael’s fellow- 
workmen by the time he had been three years in Paris. The Paris- 
ian world knew him only as the architect of his own fortunes. 

The dining-room doors were flung open presently, and Mine. 
Jarze’s guests strolled in to refresh themselves at a buffet wdiere tea, 
with sandwiches, inoffensive synips, and a little Bordeaux were 
arranged with an elegance which gave an air of luxury at a very 
small outlay. Ishmael stood beside Lady Constance wdiile she 
sipped a cup of inoffensive tea. Amelie floated about the room 
offering a casket of cakes to her mother’s guests, w'hile Hortense plied 


AJ!^ ISIIMAELITE. 


223 


her poet with red cniTant symp and sweet cakes, imploring him to 
make people happy before they departed by the recitation of one of 
his “ Kiiles.” 

“They are not intended to be declaimed in a salon,” objected 
Pontchartrain, who liked nothing better than to inflict his verses 
upon society. “People come here in the right mood to hear the 
scraping of catgut, but not to listen to the ciy of a human heart.” 

“Indeed, you are mistaken. Monsieur Sinori’s playing has just 
imt people in tune for tiaie poetry — that exquisite melody of Weber’s, 
so weird, so strange.” 

Pontchartrain gave her a withering look. 

“lam sorry you have not yet discovered the difference between a 
fiddler and a poet,” he said, while the kind, dark face of the Italian 
smiled at them across the cups and saucers, unconscious .of the 
vicomte’s depreciation. 

“ If you would only give us that too pathetic little poem, ‘ The 
Prayer of a Galley Slave. ’ Let me see, now ; how does it begin ? ” 

“You like those lines,” said the vicomte, relenting from his 
severity, and turning his tarnished eyeballs upon the damsel with a 
gratified look. “Yes; I think that prayer of the galley slave is 
worth a hecatomb of your faded love-songs, your pious inaptitudes, 
your prattle of angels and children, and grandmammas and grand- 
papas. ” 

And then between his clinched teeth, frowning darkly the while, 
he mumbled his own verses : 

“ O, toi ! qui, dans mon coeur, n’excitas que demence, 

Que me sert ta pitie, que me fait ta clemence ; 

Frappe sans plus tarder celui qui te maudit, 

Ecrase et foudroie.” 


“ You will recite those grand lines for us, will you not ? ” pleaded 
Hortense. 

The vicomte shrugged his shoulders and elevated his eyebrows, 
with the air of a man who yields to the inexorable frivolity of his 
surroundings. 

“If my recitation can possibly interest any one,” he muttered, 
with a supercilious glance at the company. 

“It will delight us all. Monsieur la Comte is going to recite 
something when we go back to the salon,” announced Hortense 
triumphantly. 

People gave the usual murmur of suppressed rapture, and the 
pleasures, of the table being by this time fairly exhausted, the 
majority returned to the salon, leaving a privileged minority to 
take their ease and light their cigarettes with M. Jarze, a stout, 
inoffensive person, who had never had a will of his own since his 
marriage. The dining-room doors being closed upon these sybarites, 
M. Pontchartrain took his stand in the centre of the apartment, be- 
side a gilded table, upon which the thoughtful Hortense had placed 
a glass of water. 

He scraped his throat once or twice, jAunged his right hand in his 


224 


AN ISnMAELITE, 


waistcoat, played with his watch-chain with the left, looked first 
downward at his neat little varnished boots, then upward at the ceil- 
ing, and then in a deep and altogether artificial voice — his natural 
tones inclining to a nasal treble — he began the prayer of the galley 
slave, the format of Toulon, broiling and toiling under a copper sky, 
scorned and hated of men, forgotten of God. 

Needless to say that the “fagot’s” prayer was one long blas- 
phemy, that he reviled his Creator in every line, that the whole 
poem reeked with the foulest atheism, and was in perfect harmony 
with the new French school — a curious mixture of slang and sub- 
limity, pathos and bathos, Victor Hugo and Villon, Kabelais and 
Voltaire. The vicomte, with his eyes on the ceiling, and his organ 
tones sinking ever and anon into an inaudible groan, declaimed his 
verses, with an intense solemnity, a profound belief in their power to 
inspire awe and horror ; and when at last his voice melted by a 
gradual diminuendo into silence, he looked round the room, with 
the air of giving his audience permission to breathe again. There 
were more murmurs, which miglit mean anything in the world, and 
which did for the most part mean sincere gratification at the thing 
being over. 

“Is that your idea of x^oetry, madam?” asked Ishmael, still stand- 
ing beside Lady Constance Danetree. 

“I freely confess that it is not,” answered Constance ; “but there 
is a fashion in literature, just as there is in gowns and bonnets, and 
these horrors are the novelty of the day. It is the school of Beaude- 
laire and his Flowers of Evil.” 

“ And such men as these liox^e to fill the place of Alfred de Mus- 
set,” said Ishmael. 

“You admire Musset?” she asked, wondering that there should 
be room for the love of x^oetry in the mind of a master of figures 
and mechanics. 

“ Yes. He is not a cheerful poet, but he has given me at least 
distraction of mind in many a gloomy hour.” 

“And in your life— which I imagine must have been full of busi- 
ness anxieties — you could really find time for poetry ? ” 

“Why not? The man who works hardest at facts and figures 
has most need of an occasional excursion into the unreal world. 
There is always the longing for an oasis in the desert of dull reali- 
ties. ” 

It was growing late, and Mine. Jarze’s guests w^ere dispersing. 
Lady Constance had intended only to sx^end half an hour in the 
Jarze salon — to keeii her word to her hostess, and no more. She 
had stayed nearly two hours, and the time had seemed to her as 
nothing. Ishmael accompanied her down the broad stone staircase 
with its sumptuous carpet and gilded balusters, its architectural 
doors, surmounted by x^laster-of-Paris cupidons and festoons of flow- 
ers molded by machinery, after the school of Jean Goujon. The 
actress’s door on the entre-sol was ajar, and there came from within 
a rixiple of laughter, a murmur of well-bred masculine voices, and a 
cheerful chinking of glass and silver, as Lady Constance and her 
coinx^anion passed. The actress was altogether comme il faut, or 


AN I8IIMAELITE. 


225 


she would not have been allowed to inhabit that temple of the re- 
spectabilities, but even the most correct of actresses must have sup- 
per after the play, and cannot always sup alone, nor is a little game 
of baccarat, jdayed quietly within closed doors, an offence against 
society. 

Ishmael saw Lady Constance to her carriage. 

“I have very little way to go,” she said, as she bade him good- 
night ; “ only just on the other side of the arch.” 

During their leisurely descent of the staircase she had been won- 
dering a little that he had not seized the opportunity to ask joermis- 
sion to call upon her. She was generally beset by people who craved 
that privilege after the briefest acquaintance, people whose requests 
she granted with the feelings of a martyr ; but here was a man in 
whom she felt really interested, an exceptional man, as Mme. Jarze 
had said, and he held his i3eace. 

Perhaps she made that little remark about the locality of her 
abode in order to give him an opportunity. But he took no advan- 
tage of her kindness. 

“ Do you live in this part of Paris?” she asked. 

“ No, I have an old house in the Place Eoyale.” 

“ How curious ! Do you really care for old houses — you who have 
built so many new ones ? ” 

“ Perhaps it is for that reason I love the old. One gets weary of 
the sameness of modern Parisian houses — white and cold, and daz- 
zling — too small for a j^alace, too big for a home. My old panelled 
rooms in the Place Eoyale have a homely look that I like.” 

‘ ‘ But are they not too large for a bachelor ? ” 

“Not too large for my books.” 

‘ ‘ You have a library then ? ” asked Constance, unconsciously 
supercilious. 

She could not help feeling surpiised at any evidence of refinement 
in a man who had begun his career as a journeyman stonemason. 

“ I have been collecting books for the last eighteen years — they 
are my chief companions — they mark the stages of my life, are a 
calendar of the years that are gone. You could never imagine how 
full of eloquence even the backs of them are for their owner. ” 

‘ ‘ How interesting to collect in that way — slowly — from year to 
year — instead of ordering a library en bloc ! ” said Constance. 

Had she sat herself to imagine a millionaire contractor’s library, 
she would have pictured a lofty and spacious room, with carved 
bookcases, classic busts to order, and a gorgeous array of Purgold 
or Bozerian bindings, contents selected by the bookseller. And it 
seemed that this man valued books for their own sake, and had 
chosen them for himself one by one. Truly a strange man after his 
kind. 

“ Good-night.” 

“ Good-night.” 

They shook hands through the carriage window, almost like old 
fi-iends, and the brougham drove off toward the archway, white and 
pure in the March moonbeams, sculptured vdth victories that were 
past and gone, telling of a time more heroic even than those golden 
15 


226 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


years of the Second Empire. And they too were gone with the 
snows of last winter, and France drooped lier imperial head ever so 
little, bowed with a growing sense of impotence. Had she not 
l^ledged herself to establish an Empire la-bas between the two 
Americas, and had she not failed ignominiously ? Had she not been 
warned off the premises by the United States, bidden to depart with 
her army and its baggage lest a worse thing should befall her ? And 
she had been fooled by William and Bismarck, and she was ill 
friends with Italy. Traly the glory of Israel had departed — and 
Ichabod was the word written, in mystic characters that only the 
wise could read, on yonder triumphal gate. 

Lady Constance leaned back in her brougham with a sigh, not for 
the vanishing splendors of the Empire, but with a faint vague sense 
of disa23pointment. She had seen this millionaire about whom 
everybody had been plaguing her for the last six months, and she 
had been told again and again by Mme. Jarze that he had long de- 
sired to meet her. And they had met, and they had jrarted, without 
a word of any future meeting on his part. Could it be that for once 
in her life Lady Constance had failed to make a favorable impres- 
sion upon a stranger of the op^rosite sex ? Never before had such a 
thing happened to her. It would be, if this were so, an utterly new 
experience ; new, and in somewise unjdeasant. Women accustomed 
to universal worshij) miss the incense, albeit they may affect to de- 
spise the votive herd. And here was a man unlike the herd, and 
therefore interesting, and he had seen her and evidently cared not a 
jot if he never saw her again. 

And yet on their fimt introduction, when their eyes met and their 
glances seemed to mingle in sudden light and warmth — mingle as 
two gases meet and take fire — then it had seemed to her as if for 
both of them that first meeting was an electric shock, a surprise, a 
revelation, a recognition almost. As if they two had from the very 
beginning of things been doomed so to meet, so to kindle into flame. 

“ What is it to you ? ” his eyes had seemed to say. 

And he let her go without so much as the commonplace request 
for permission to call ui^oii her. 

Was he shy — at a loss how to act from sheer ignorance of the con- 
ventionalities of daily life ? She thought not. His manners were 
self-possessed and easy. He was grave, but not reserved. He spoke 
of himself freely — seemed in no wise disturbed by the sense of her 
superior rank. He had not made any attempt to continue the ac- 
quaintance, sim 2 )ly because he rvas in no hurry to see her again. Of 
course if he pleased he could get Mme. Jai’ze to take him to the 
villa in the Bois, but that would seem a circuitous way of approach- 
ing a lady who had shown herself sufficiently gracious to be ap- 
proached more directly. 

“ I dare say he is wrapped up in his bridges and viaducts and de- 
tests women’s society,” Constance told herself, as she drew her 
furred mantle closer round her before alighting at her own door. 

It was a matter upon which a person of Constance Danetree’s calm 
temperament might have been supposed incapable of wasting five 
minutes’ thought ; and yet when her maid had been dismissed she 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


227 


sat before the fire in her dressing-room, staring at the smoldering 
logs, and brooding iij^on this frivolous question half through the 
night. She knew that it would be useless to lie down. Sleep was 
impossible for a brain on fire. She sat till the dark, restful night 
hours were well-nigh spent ; sat with her slippered feet on the fen- 
der, her Indian silk dressing-gown wrapped carelessly round her, 
her hair coiled in a loose knot at the back of her head, pale, grave, 
like a sibyl reading the book of fate, as written in flickering flame 
and falling embers. What was it, what did it mean, this sudden 
fever, never felt before — this persistency of the mind in dwelling 
upon one subject, this monotony of the fancy which would picture 
only one face — that dark Roman face, with the lambent flame in the 
eyes, those grave lips, shaded, but not hidden by the thick black 
mustache ? What was it, this sudden possession taken of her soul 
— by a man whose face she had not seen six hours ago ? Six hours 
ago, and she would have passed him in the street, unrecognized, 
unnoticed. And now, because they had met and looked into each 
other’s eyes, and talked to each other for a little while upon the 
most indifferent subjects, she could not banish him out of her mind 
for a moment. His image jDOSsessed her, mastered her fancy, filled 
her thoughts. He was there, at her side, as she sat by the fire. His 
presence was almost as real in the strength of her ardent fancy as if 
he had been there in flesh. She wondered where, how soon they 
would meet again. Her imagination began to picture possible meet- 
ings ; her fancy painted the scene of their rencontre, lighted it with 
the dazzle of sunshine, or the soft radiance of moonbeams — sjjoke 
for him, spoke for her— eloquent, spiritual, touching the confines of 
passion, breathing of unavowed love. And all this for a man she 
had met for the firet time only six hours ago. 

What did it all mean ? Could it be the thing she had read of in 
novels, and smiled at for its foolishness, its impossibility ? Could 
it be love at first sight — love given unsought, unasked, for a man 
who had once worked as a common stonemason ? ^ah ! the idea 
was revolting. 

A moment of scorn, a movement of indignation at her own folly, 
a sudden drawing up of the proud head. “ I will think of the man 
no more.” 

And then, in the next instant, the statuesque throat drooped again, 
the rounded chin sunk on the womanly breast, and the eyes gazed 
dreamily into the dying fire. 

“I have wondered ever since I was a girl if I should ever know 
what love meant,” she thought. “ Has it come at last ? ” 

A x)ause and then a sudden light in the lovely eyes. 

“ Yes, it has come— it is here— and for good or evil I bid the stran- 
ger welcome.” 


228 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


CHAPTER XXIX. 

*‘MT beloved is mine and I AM 

Tlie gi’eat circular show in the Cbamp de Mars was officially 
opened on the appointed first of April, but that -wonderful fairy jm!- 
ace about which people had been talking all the winter, first revealed 
itself to society aniid a chaotic confusion of planks, canvas, scaf- 
folding and work-people of all kinds. Those Moorish ]>alaces, 
Chinese jiavilions, restaurants, cafes, drinking-bars of the outermost 
circles — which were aftenvard to become more famous, more ])opn- 
lar than all the wonders of art and science in the main building — • 
existed at this period only in the imagination of official Journalists, 
who went into raptimes about splendors which were as yet only to 
be seen on paper. In a biting east wind, and amid the clinking 
of hammers, the hurr;vdng to and fro of workmen, the imperial trio — 
emiieror, empress, and fair young prince -appeared, and the Exhi- 
bition was declared open. But there was no imperial speech. The 
Luxembourg question made a little cloud in the political horizon at 
this period ; while there was a thick darkness yonder over the vol- 
canic soil of Mexico. Not a happy time for imperial eloquence by 
any means ; so the world’s show was o^Dened in discreet silence, save 
for that clinking of hammers. 

Lady Constance Danetree, having very few interests in life, was 
naturally among the first to visit the newly opened building. She 
was not enthusiastic about exhibitions, having seen several, and de- 
claring that she had been bored to death by the great Exhibition of 
sixty-two, which had . seemed to her a terrible falling off from the 
Crystal Palace of her childhood, the faiiy scene in Hyde Park — flags 
flying, trees growing, fountains springing — all under the glittering 
glass roof. Yes, she had been a child then, full of capacity for de- 
light ; and in sixty-two she was a young -woman, leaning on her 
newly wedded husband’s arm. And now in sixty-seven she declared 
that she was getting old, and cared not a straw for all the wonder- 
ful things that could be brought from the four corners of the eai*th. 

But in Paris Lady Constance found she must do a good many 
things to please other people ; or else take a gi'eat deal of trouble in 
saying no. It was sometimes less trouble to consent than to refuse. 
The Jarzes, who insisted upon being her intimate friends, self-elected 
to that office, plagued her to go to the Exhibition with them on the 
first day, and rather than be disobliging she agreed to go. 

There was a vague hope — a faint suggestion of her fancy — which 
made the idea of that early visit pleasanter than it would otherwise 
have been. Was it not likely that he, Ishmael, a man keenly inter- 
ested in all practical things, w^ould be among the earliest visitors ? 
If he were there the place was so gigantic that the odds against 
meeting him would be tremendous. But he might be there, and 
they might meet ; and even this gave zest to the business and i3ut 
Constance in good humor. She asked the Jarzes to breakfast on the 


AJV ISIIMAELITE. 


220 


first of April and was in excellent spirits during tlie meal — served 
with an ideal elegance, prepared by an ideal cook — a natural result 
of ample means and ample leisure for making the best use of money. 

“ I wonder whether your friend Monsieur Ishmael will be at the 
Exhibition to-day?” she said carelessly, as they drove from the 
door. The east wind was blowing, the sky was dull and gray ; l)ut 
the mere thought that they two might meet steeped the world in 
warmth and sunlight. 

Amfdie looked at her intently for an instant with a much keener 
gaze than one would expect from her. 

“ Monsieur Ishmael is just the last person I expect to meet in the 
Exhibition,” she said, “ for I think his interest in the place must be 
exhausted by this time. He is a privileged person and has been 
allowed to explore the works as often as he liked. Indeed, I believe 
he was consulted about the plan of the building and has watched 
the growth of it from the very first.” 

IMme. Jarze smiled approvingly at her younger daughter. 

“ Monsieur Ishmael and my Amelie are fast friends,” she said. 
“ It is strange what an interest the dear child takes in great engin- 
eering works. I found her the other day puzzHng her xDoor little 
brain over a tremendous book on canals.” 

“ There are times when one sickens of a life made up of chiffons,” 
said Amelie, with a sentimental air. 

“When is that, I wonder?” asked Hortense, contemptuously. 
“ When your dressmaker refuses to trust you for any more gowns, 
or when you have been short of partners at a ball ? ” 

‘ ‘ Amelie never has a lack of partners, ” said the mother, indig- 
nantly. 

Mme. Jarze and her elder hope lived in a kind of armed neutrality. 
The day had been when Hortense was paraded everywhere, dressed, 
praised, petted as a daughter whose early and brilliant marriage 
must inevitably do honor to the house of Jarze ; but when chance 
after chance was lost, and Hortense began to grow thin and hollow- 
cheeked, her mother lost faith in this first venture and concentrated 
all her hopes upon the second. True that Hortense was haiKlsome. 
Years ago she had ranked as the beauty daughter and Amelie had 
been left to pine in the background. Hortense had large dark eyes, 
a classic profile, while Amelie’s retrousse nose and large mouth, 
light gray eyes, and plump figure were bourgeoise to the last de- 
gree. But as time w'ent on Hortense’s coni])] exion grew' sallow', the 
classic profile sharpened to severity, the thin lips became almost 
pallid, the dark eyes assumed a gloomy look ; while, on the other 
hand, ces dames had brought retrousse noses, large mouths, and 
plump figures into fashion — the little King Charles’ spaniel style 
of face, set off’ by a, cloud of fluffy yellow hair, became the rage — and 
Amelie was adnrired ; while Hortense, with the air of Madame Ro- 
land about to ascend the scaffold, was left to wither in the cold 
shade of absolute neglect. Amelie had made an exhaustive study of 
the airs and graces of ces dames, wdiom she saw' daily in the Bois 
and nightly at opeiu or theatre ; and upon this popular style she 
had foundkl and fashioned her own beauty. The neutral-tinted 


230 


AjY I8IIMAELITE. 


hair became a golden yellow ; the i^encilled eyebrows gave piquancy 
by their dark firm line ; the large full lips were accentuated with 
carmine, and the plump figure was laced and moulded into the fash- 
ionable form. In a word, Amelie was as like Cora as it was possible 
for her to be under existing conditions. The court official, elderly 
and half -blind, stared at the dazzling a2)parition and wondered — 
nay, even went so far on one occasion as to ask his wife if Amffiie’s 
style of dress was quite respectable ; 'but at the very next ball at the 
Tiiileries the empress herself graciously informed him that Made- 
moiselle Amelie was much more attractive than her elder sister — 
suspected of an Orleanist bias — and that his younger daughter was 
chic, all that there is of the most chic. 

“ Oh,” thought Monsieur Jarze, “ then that is chic ? I am glad t 
know what chic means.” 

Lady Constance leant back in her carnage with a Aveaiy air. All 
her interest in the Exhibition had vanished in a breath. The whole 
thing became a nuisance. These Jarzes, with their unpleasant 
idiosyncrasies, their half-concealed antagonisms — why had she ever 
permitted herself to associate with such people ? That younger girl 
liad obviously dyed her hair and ])ainted her eyebrows — a creature 
of hardly twenty years of age. Hortense was as obviously malig- 
nant. They were like a pair of wicked sisters in a fairy tale. And 
to know such people, and to go about with them, only for lack of 
the moral courage to shut one’s door in their faces ! But society 
was made so. 

This was the drift of Lady Constance Danetree’s thoughts as her 
carriage crossed the river and drew up at the entrance to the Ex- 
hibition, amid a confusion of deiDendencies and outbuildings in 
the course of erection, wagons disgorging their contents, packing- 
cases, diggers and delvers laying out the ground j)lans of future 
gardens, laborers groaning as they carried the tanks for the future 
aquarium. 

Within all was in an embryo state, like a first rehearsal of a pan- 
tomime. Lady Constance and her friends went about looking with 
a cursory air at everything, hardly seeing anything. The whole 
business had all at once become flat, stale, and unprofitable to a 
woman spoiled by unbroken prosperity and in search of strong 
emotions. 

Three weeks ago a strong emotion had come upon her unawares, 
like a galvanic shock ; and she had been living on the memory of 
that feeling ever since. She despised herself for this strange weak- 
ness of a strong nature, never having realized the fact that the 
strongest natures are most prone to such aberrations. That she, 
Consknce Danetree, the courted and admired, could allow her fancy 
to be touched, her deepest feelings to be aroused by a stranger, a man 
of whom she knew nothing definite except the one galling fact that 
he had begun his career as a common laborer. To such a man, un- 
sought, she had surrendered her thoughts, her dreams, her peace of 
mind— she, the daughter of one of the proudest peers in Ireland. 
^y hat was it —magic— madness— or only the folly that comes of a 
life given over to frivolous amusements-^a life without high aim or 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


231 

imselfisli puipose ? She told herself that this humiliation, this bit- 
ter sense of being mastered by a foolish fancy, was the natural out- 
come of the life she had led since her husband’s death — a life of 
self-indulgence, days and nights consumed in fashionable dissipa- 
tion, a going to and fro over the earth, allowing her beauty to be 
praised by idle lips, accepting the flatteries of the insincere," living 
the hollow, artificial life of an advanced civilization, a world tending 
toward its fall. 

Philosophize as she might the fact remained. For the coming of 
this man, wdiom she had seen but once in her life, she longed as 
ardently as Juliet longed for the advent of Komeo. 

“And I have always despised Juliet,” thought Constance, 
“ Neither her youth nor her Italian temperament could excuse her in 
my eyes. And yet ten years Juliet’s senior, I am as romantic and 
impressionable as she. ” 

Three weeks ago she had found some excuse for her -folly in the 
thought that the awakening of feeling had been as mutual as it was 
sudden. Instinct had told her that Ishmael’s heart had answered 
beat for beat to the strong pulses of her own. They had spoken 
together only as strangers speak, but there are looks and tones un- 
translatable in words, and yet fraught with deepest meanings to the 
keen apprehension of a sensitive woman. Had her instinct and her 
apprehension utterly dece^v^ed her on this one occasion of her life ? 
Hitherto she had been so quick to perceive, that she had the reputa- 
tion of a kind of clairvoyance ; and now, in this crisis of her life, 
when unknown depths of feeling were mysteriously troubled, as the 
sacred pool by the angel, her powers of clairvoyance all at once de- 
serted her, and she was as much at sea as a school-girl. 

Nearly three weeks had passed since that March night when they 
two had met, and Ishmael had made no sign. It would have been 
so easy for him to contrive a second meeting. A man in his posi- 
tion, courted, worshipj^ed almost for the sake of that wealth which 
everywhere means irower— -such a man was master of the situation. 
He had but to hint a wish and his desire would be realized. A mill- 
ion of money is the modern realization of Aladdin’s lamp, which 
may have been an allegory intended to foreshadow the advent of 
silver kings, pill-makers, and great contractors. 

Ishmael had not brought about a second rencontre ; therefore he 
had no desire to see Lady Constance Danetree again. This was what 
the lady had in her mind as she strolled listlessly in the outer circle, 
where the machinery was exhibited, and stifled a yawn as she lis- 
tened to Madam Jarze’s complaint that the building offered no coup 
d’oeil. 

“Stupendous — immense — but no coup d’oeil.” 

And in the next moment a grave baritone voice was asking her 
what she thought of the Exhibition, and her gloved liand was in 
the grasp of that strong hand with the mark of the beast, the car- 
penter’s thumb. The whole scene w’as transformed in an instant, 
like a change in a stage decoration, and this outer circle of steam-en- 
gines, pistons, pulleys, model ships, model locomotives, ice-making, 
iron-cutting, potato-peeling machinery, which she had just de- 


232 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


nonneed as liideons and revolting, became all at once full of inter- 
est. 

“ Will you show us some of the model bridges, and explain them 
to us ? ” asked Amelie, with the air of an intelligent child of nine or 
ten. “ I have been reading about canals and bridges lately.” 

Ishmael smiled upon her benignantly, just as he might have smiled 
at the intelligent child. 

“What, mademoiselle; do you ever read?” he exclaimed. “I 
thought you only cared for theatres, balls, races, pleasure of all 
kinds.” 

“ There comes a time when one grows weary of pleasure,” said 
Amalie. 

“Ah, but you have not come to that time. However, I shall be 
charmed to be your cicerone among the models. They are a little in 
my line. Did you see the iron-plated men-of-war as you came in ? 
There are some very good models of suspension bridges a little way 
on — but everything is chaotic at present.” 

He led the way, irointing out things as they passed — American 
“ Monitors,” turret-ships, rams, floating batteries, transports with ac- 
commodation for four or five hundred horses. He stopped now and 
again to explain some curious piece of machinery, a monster locomo- 
tive, for instance, with ten wheels and a horizontal chimney. The 
rods and cranks and wheels which had seemed a meaningless monot- 
ony of steel and iron a few minutes before became at his voice in- 
stinct with meaning, an 1 almost as full of individuality as if they 
had been living creatures. He told them about the Nasmyth ham- 
mer, which Lady Constance had hitherto supposed to be some handy 
little patent for knocking in tin tacks without hurting one's fingers. 
He showed them cannon of different orders, and told them the se- 
crets of those dark bores which on the field of battle were as the 
mouths of devils vomiting death and destruction. 

Constance listened silently, drinking in every tone of the deep 
musical voice. Strange that the tone should be so completely that 
of gentle blood and good breeding. Had tlie millionaire learned to 
speak as M. Jourdain learned to fence — after he had made his for- 
tune ? She had believed that liitherto there was no more certain in- 
dication of man’s origin than the sound of his voice, and yet here 
was a lowly born mechanic with accents as pure and true as one 
could hear from a Conde or a Grammont. It was pleasant to listen 
even to the dry-as-dust details of a suspension bridge from such a 
fine organ. Constance stood by and listened with delight while Isli- 
mael explained the plan of the bridge at Fribourg in Switzerland, 
and of the tubular bridge over the Menai Straits, across which she 
had so often been carried, indolently lolling in the corner of a rail- 
way carriage, without a thought as to how the thing was done. 

Somehow or other — Lady Constance could not have told how it 
came about — she found herself and Ishmael a little in advance of the 
rest, after they had all seen the bridges. He had taken the o})por- 
tiinity of an encounter between Mme. Jarze and some friends to 
leave the lady and her two daughters a little in the rear, while he led 
Constance onward through the wonder-world of mechanism. Amelie 


AN ISHMAELITE. - 


233 


came hnriying after them presently — gushing — infantine — like the 
last ingenu ee in the last comedy at the Gymnase, “wanting to 
know, you know,” saying silly things of malice aforethought, with 
the idea that to be silly is the surest way to fascinate a serious and 
practical man. Ishmael shook himself free from her as if she had 
been a burr. He addressed his conversation exclusively to Lady 
Constance ; whereupon Amelie was constrained to console herself 
with the society of two feeble specimens of gilded youth who had 
been wandering all over the building in search of a buvette where 
they could get some absinthe, and were in despair at having discov- 
ered no such oasis in the desert of art and science. 

With Ishmael for her guide, Lady Constance Danetree made an 
exhaustive round of the building and its exterior appurtenances. 
The place had been liis recreation ground for the last six montlis. 
He had been there every day, watching, advising, with quick eye 
and active brain. He was hand in glove with the builders ; he 
made friends with strangers from afar — Yankees, Californians, pur- 
veyors of ready-made houses from Chicago, Norwegians, Icelanders, 
dwellers in the Indian Archipelago and the South Seas. He knew 
the place by heart, and it was delightful to Constance to see and 
understand these practical elements of life under his guidance, 
as she had never seen or understood before. She remembered 
how at South Kensington, in sixty-two, she and her husband had 
idly strolled about the huge building, looking in a trivial way 
at this and at that, Gibson’s tinted Venus, the singing bird from 
Switzerland, Rimmel’s perfumed fountain — here a jewel, and there a 
piece of furniture — shunning the machinery courts as if they were 
infected — pleased with the picture-galleries, still better pleased at 
chance meetings with friends, interminable gossip and chatter— leav- 
ing the mighty show without one definite idea added to their scanty 
stock of knowledge. 

Poor Mark never could interest himself in anything that did not 
go on four legs, she thought, remembering her husband’s passion 
for horses and dogs, and how his conversation, starting from whatever 
point, always harked back to stable or kennel. 

It was growing dark, when, after losing her party three or four 
times, she found them again near the door by which they had en- 
tered. 

“ I never was so tired of anything in my life,” said Mme. Jarze, 
utterly exhausted by the fatigue of the show and the little disagree- 
ables of family intercourse. 

“ Strange,” exclaimed Constance. “ I, who am generally bored 
to death by these exhibitions, find this one full of interest.” 

She shook hands with Ishmael before she got into her carriage, 
frankly, cordially, with a happy look in those violet-gray eyes, a look 
which gave a new glory to their loveliness. She was on the point 
of asking him to call on her some day with his friends the Jarzes, 
but changed her mind in an instant, as shy as a girl. 

“ He Avill come of his own accord, ’’she thought, for, like a chorus 
keeping time with the quickened beating of her heart, went the 
words, “I know he loves me.” She smiled at him as she took her 


2o4: 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


seat in her barouche. Her eyes were shining on him like sunlight 
in the gray, dull afternoon, as he stood, bareheaded, watching the 
carriage drive away through the keen, piercing wind. 

She was to drop the Jarzes on her way home. The thoroughbred 
grays started at a sharp trot and swept along the quay, across the 
Pont de TAlma, up the broad avenue into the Champs Elysees. 

Mme. Jarze drew her velvet mantle round her with a vehement 
shiver, while Hortense and Amelie, with their backs to the horses, 
huddled together under the large black wolf-skin rug. “ ’Tis in 
ourselves that we are thus or thus.” To OonsAance Danetree the 
atmosphere seemed balmy. 

“ I wonder that you can di-ive in an open carriage in such weather,” 
said Mme. Jarze, complainingly — base ingratitude on her part, since 
the use of her friend’s barouche saved her the cost of a hired vehicle, 
her victoria de remise being chartered only for two hours on Mon- 
days and Thursdays. 

“ I love the open air,” replied Constance, with the grand manner 
of a being who could never be cold, whose veins were filled with 
divine ichor, not with common human blood that curdles and makes 
gooseflesh at the slightest provocation. 

“ I had no idea you had a passion for machinery,” said Amelie, 
l^allid with disappointment, anger, jealousy, envy, half the seven 
deadly sins, and a few of the smaller ones thrown in. Her painted 
lips quivered and their false bloom made her pallor seem more 
ghastly. 

“ Nor had I until this afternoon,” answered Constance easily. 
“ But the dryest subject becomes interesting when explained by a 
clever man.” 

“ Especially when he is not a gray-headed, doddering old profes- 
sor with green spectacles and red cotton handkerchief, but a man 
still in the prime of life, handsome, striking, altogether exceptional,” 
pursued Amelie. 

“ That certainly makes the whole business more agreeable,” re- 
plied Constance. 

She perfectly understood Amelie’s drift, and perceived that she 
had a rival — a rival to the very death — in this young lady with baby 
airs and baby graces, turned-up nose and flossy golden "hair. But 
she was not going to be discomfited by a chit. Perhaps, woman as 
she was, secure in the consciousness of superior beauty, superior ac- 
complishments, even this petty rivalry added a new zest to love. 

“I hope we shall see you next Thursday evening,” said Mine. 
Jarze, as the carriage stopped at the door of the Champs Elysees 
caravansera, with its gigantic pediment, supported by caryatides in 
Caen stone. 

“ Pray come. Monsieur Ishmael will be with us, and can give 
you another lecture on suspension bridges,” said Amelie. 

Constance wavered before replying. What if this were her only 
chance of meeting him again in the next ten days, and she let it go ; 
just as if a parched traveller in the desert should spill the one cup 
of water which was to refresh and comfort him? No ; this time she 
told herself the thing was certain. He loved her. She had looke<l 


AN imMAELITE. 


5^35 


into liis eyes once and once only, unawares, as they two stood on 
each side of a cannon in the Exhibition yonder, and siie had read the 
thought of his brain, the imjDulse of his heart, in those dark earnest 
eyes. She knew that lie loved her. And this being so, it was for 
her to be sought, not to seek. Not for worlds would she lay plans 
for meeting him ; waylay him as it were. Her duty to herself in- 
volved the strictest reserve. 

“You are very good,” she said. “I am full of engagements for 
Thursday. I’m afraid this is going to be a desperately gay season.” 

Anielie gave an impatient little sigh. Alas ! she thought, what it 
is to be born in the purple ! There were dinners and bfuls to which 
Lady Constance Danetree was bidden, at which M. Jarze’s daugh- 
ters could not hope to appear ; and even at those parties to which 
they were invited there was always the harassing question of toilet, 
the agonizing doubt as to whether their gowns were good enougli for 
the occasion, whether the parure of flow’ers, picked out petal by pet- 
al, pinched and repinclied by delicate fingers for an industrious 
hour, did not, after all, look tumbled, faded, second-handed, amid 
the freshness of garnitures that had been sent from the milliner’s 
half an hour before the f6te. That rage for luxury and fine dress 
which began with the second Empire, and which has been growing 
ever since, and which rages more furiously than ever after fourteen 
years of liepublican rule, was the cause of many a heartburning to 
women of mediocre fortunes. It was the wives and daughters of 
those days who drove the men upon the Stock Exchange, flung 
them — hands tied — into the bottomless gulf of si^eculation, the To- 
phet of chicanery. The daughters of that time were as the daugh- 
ters of the horse-leech, forever crying, “Give.” From the day they 
left their convents, to peep shyly from a mother’s wing at the glory 
and splendor of the world, they saw only a p>eople bent on pleasure 
and amusement, wearing fine clothes, living in fine houses, eating 
fine dinners, spending fortunes on carriages, hot-house flowers, wax 
candles, all the elegancies and daintinesses of life, getting their 
money in many instances mysteriously, as if it were manna dropped 
from heaven, and again as if it were manna, never being able 
to save any against an evil day. What girl of Amelie Jarze’s age 
could live in the Champs Elysees and see the everlasting procession 
of elegant carriages rolling by to the Bois in the sunlight of an 
April afternoon — great ladies, cocodettes, actresses, cocottes— and 
not long passionately to be as fine and as beautiful to the eye as 
these ? Vain to remind her that her fath^ was a government official, 
highly placed, and earning a salary of fifteen thousand francs ; that 
her mother’s dot was in all forty thousand francs, and that half of 
that small capital had been devoured by the expenses of education, 
while the two girls were at school, and the furnishing of this elegant 
second floor in this brand new house when the girls left school. 
The recapitulation of hard facts cannot stop a girl’s longing for 
ideasure, for fine clothes, for a carriage, to be as well ofi" as her 
neighbors. 

The actress on the entre-sol was one of the sharpest thorns in 
Amelie’s side. She was always observant of her goings out and 


236 


AN mUMAELlTE. 


comings in, her new clothes, her visitors, her Sunday dinner parties. 
Not on one particular evening in the week came Mile. Arnould’s 
friends. She had her little levee every afternoon — officers, finan- 
ciers, artists, journalists, flocked to the shrine. Mile. Aiiiould had 
introduced le five o’clock for these afternoon recei^tions ; cakes, hot- 
house grapes, brandy and soda, absinthe, vermouth, ciystallized 
rose leaves, half a dozen tiny egg-shell cups and saucers, and a little 
china pot filled with weakest tea. That W’as mademoiselle’s idea of 
le five o’clock. Her admirers thronged to this collation. 

The windows of the low-ceiled salons w-ere obliged to be opened 
for air. The voices and the laughter came up to another open win- 
dow on the second floor, at which Amelie stood listening, and watch- 
ing mademoiselle’s admirers come and go, counting the neat little 
coupes crawling up and down the road. Why w^as she not an act- 
ress, able to command diamonds, new^ gowns, hothouse flow^ers by 
the van-load, dinners from the fashionable caterer, and, best of all, 
the worship of a coui’t like that which w^as being held below ? Or if 
not an actress, why could she not marry a rich man wdio could give 
her all these things ? 

One such man, able to give her all that made life -svorth having — 
life as exemplified in this w^onderful city of Paris in the year of 
sixty-seven, and to her mind the only life livable — one such man, 
the only one, had heaven sent across her patliAvay. Millionaires 
might abound in this golden age of French history, wdiich W'ds fast 
drifting toward the age of blood and iron, did Amelie bub know it ; 
but millionaires as a rule declined to come to Mine. Jarze’s Thurs- 
days. 

Ishinael was more good-natured. M. Jarze had been fortunate 
enough to do him a small service a year ago in hurrying a patent 
through the patent-office; and Ishmael went to Mine. Jarze’s tea- 
parties out of sheer gratitude. These w^ere small things ; but what 
will not hope build upon ? Amelie told herself that she was pretty, 
in the very newest style of prettiness, which might bo considered 
hideous five years hence ; that she was fascinating, also in the new 
style; and what could Ishmael want more in a wife? supposing 
always that he wanted a wife. Even if the inclination for matri- 
mony did nob at present exist, it might surely be evolved by the 
charms of friendly intercourse with a girl who had a great deal in 
her. That was the reputation which Amelie had won for herself 
among her intimates. People spoke of her as a nice lively girl, with 
a great deal in her. And such a girl everybody agreed was bound 
to go far, in some direction or other. 

As a cat watches a mouse had Amffiie watched the conduct and 
manner of Ishmael to other women. Until that fatal Thursday when 
ho was introduced to Lady Constance Danetree, he had api)eared 
cold as ice. Even the keen eye of jealousy could discover no evil. 
He had talked to pretty women, to amusing women, to clever 
women, and there had been no shade in his manner to mark that his 
fancy was caught or his heart touched by any of them. But the 
night he met Constance Danetree he had an absorbed air which ^yas 
new, and Amffiie’s bosom was from that hour the abode of the green- 


AN ISHMAeLITE. 


237 


eyed one. The afternoon at the Exhibition was a time of torture, 
for Ishmael openly devoted himself to Lady Constance, and as openly 
evaded Amelie’s somewhat exacting society. Amelie’s feelings, as 
she sat with her mother and sister in a box at one of the minor 
theatres of Paris that evening of the first of April, had an intensity 
which almost touched the sublime. The grief was a petty grief, 
perhaps, the anguish of a sordid soul, the disappointment of a 
fortune-hunter balked of her prey ; and yet there was an element of 
real passion, of unmercenary feeling, in the girl’s despair. Heartless 
a year ago and proud of her heartlessness, she had discovered all at 
once that she had a heart. Ishmael’s fine qualities of mind and per- 
son had won her fancy unawares. She had fallen in love with her 
victim. She had begun the pursuit stimulated only by the most 
vulgar passions, the ardent desire to be rich, to have a fine house 
and a 2 )lace of mark in this dazzling world of im23erial France. To 
queen it overdier rivals of the Sacre Coeur, most of whom were the 
daughters of much wealthier j^arents than her own, many of whom 
had already made brilliant marriages, alliances prej^ared in advance 
by family influence, warm nests ready for them to nestle in before 
the pollutions of the outer world had tarnished the purity of their 
young wings. From these comijanions of the i)ast, old comrades and 
classmates-, Amelie had drunk the cuj? of humiliation, even while 
jjrofiting greatly by their friendship) for her. These young matrons 
had sent her cards for j^arties which p)ut to shame poor Mine. Jarze’s 
Thursday evenings. They came to the Champjs Elysees in delicious 
little coupes, in victorias of the very newest elegance. They wore 
gowns from Spiricht, hardly understood the joossibility of anybody 
else making a gown that one could wear — just as they wondered 
^ that anybody could endure existence on a second floor in a huge 
barrack occupied by all the world, as it were ; while they found life 
only tolerable in a low Italian villa, guarded by eight-foot walls and 
hidden in groves of acacia and lilac, within sound of the carriages 
rolling p^ast the Barriere de I’Ltoile. They had country houses ; 
they went to Arcachon, or Biamtz, or Vichy, or Pau, directly the 
Paris season was over ; and they joatronized Amelie in a way that 
made her blood boil, and for Avhich her only recomjiense was the 
ability to boast of these stylish friends to acquaintances of meaner 
rank. 

To-night she owed the pleasure of hearing the last successful oi)er.a 
boufie to her old school-fellow Mme. de Charleroy, who had a box 
twice a week, and generally gave it away from sheer caiDriciousness. 
But for a heart wrung with the sense of disajjjDointment and failure, 
there is sorry comfort in Offenbach’s liveliest strains. 

“What rubbishing music it is ! and how can peop^le care to stare 
night after night at a fat woman who wears diamonds instead of 
clothes ! ” exclaimed Am61ie, impatiently. She had been expDloring 
the house with her opera-glass in the faint hop )0 of seeing Ishmael 
amonj^ the audience. 

“ You ought not to l)ring us to see such a prerformance, mamma ; 
it does us harm to be seen here.” 

“ I wonder what you would have said if I had left you at home ? ” 


238 


ISHMAELITE. 


retorted the mother, braced tightly in her violet silk gown made np 
by a cheap dressmaker, and trimmed with old point that had be- 
longed to M. Jarze’s mother, and which had been mended so often 
that the original work of the eighteenth century Flemish nuns was 
almost lost in the network of reparation. “ People take their daugh- 
ters almost everywhere nowadays, and if you were not seen at fash- 
ionable theatres, you would run the risk of not being seen at all by 
some of the richest men in Paris.” 

Amelie shrugged her shoulders and turned her face to the stage 
with an impatient sigh. The one rich man whom she wanted to 
win was not in the house to-night, and without him the world was a 
blank. 


CHAPTER XXX. 

“though thou set thy kest among the stars.” 

Not often in the history of mankind has earth been the theatre of 
such a scene of splendor as that which glorified Paris in the spring- 
tide and early summer of 1867. Perchance in some far-off Indian 
city, in ancient Benares or many-towered Delhi, there might be a 
greater glitter of gold and gems, statelier processions. Oriental pomp 
of palanquins and plumes, panoplied elephants, peacock thrones, 
turbans luminous with emerald and ruby ; but that barbaric show 
would have had but feeble historic meaning as compared with this 
meeting of the kings of the West, the statesmen and warriors, the 
financiers and long-headed schemers, the makers and unmakers of 
kings. It was a mighty rendezvous of the powers of the civilized 
world, a gathering of crowned heads, all seemingly intent upon the 
amusement of the hour, yet each in his heart of hearts intent upon 
making good use of his opportunities, each determined to turn the 
occasion to good political account. 

The Czar was among the first to come, accompanied by his two 
sons. It was not long since their elder brother had been laid in his 
coffin, heaped round with the fairest flowers of Nice, a fair young 
form, a calm dead face in the midst of roses and lilies, survbnng 
only in a photograph. 'William of Prussia was there, flushed with 
the tremendous victory of Sadowa — victory owed in great part to 
the neutrality of France, a service as yet unrecompensed, as witness 
this late fiasco of the Luxembourg treaty. Beside the stern soldier 
king in the open carriage in which he entered Paris sat the two mas- 
ter spirits of his kingdom — his mighty general, Moltke, the mightier 
chancellor, Bismarck. Who could tell what dreams brooded behind 
those steel-blue eyes of the senator — large, full, projecting, luminous 
with the light of a master mind ; what hidden plans lurked beneath 
that air of frank good fellowshi]) ; that outspoken Teutonic sim- 
plicity ? Cavour, giant among statesmen, was as dead as Macchia- 
velli ; but his policy and his capacity lived in his Prussian pupil. 

The East sent its potentates to swell the royal crowd. The Sul- 
tan’s large grave face, with dark solemn eyes, looked calm and uh- 


239 


ISHMAELITE. 

moved upon the imperial show, while his suzerain, the Viceroy of 
Egypt, had come to see "what kind of people these Frenchmen were 
who had cut a highway for the sliijis of the world through the sands 
of the desert. Even far olf Japan was represented by the brother of 
its mysterious ruler. 

Princes there were amid that brilliant throng, lighter souls, nurs- 
ing no deep-laid schemes, hiding no slumbering fires — princes who 
came lionestly to see the show, and to drink the cup of j)leasure in 
that season which seemed one long festival. England’s future king 
was there in the flower of his youth, kindly, debonair, keenly intel- 
ligent, first favorite among the elite of Paris, popular among tlie 
l)023ulace ; the young princes of Belgium, the princes of Prussia — 
they who were to come three years later with fire and sword, bring- 
ing in their train death and ruin, burning instead of beauty. There 
was the Crown Prince of Orange — a prince pour lire, and prince- 
lings and princesses without number. Never saw the eaiih such a 
gathering of its great ones, or a city so fitted for the scene of a fes- 
tival. The omnipotence of the emperor, the millions iioured out 
like water by Prefect Haussmann, had made Paris a city of palaces, 
a place in which even the monuments and statues of the past were 
scraped and purified to match the whiteness of the new boulevards 
— a city planned for the rich, built for the children of pleasure and 
folly, as it would seem to Diogenes, looking in the summer even- 
tide along that dazzling line of boulevards, that mighty thorough- 
fare which swept in a wide arc from the Bastile to the Champs Ely- 
s6es, a double range of monumental mansions, theatres, restaurants, 
cafes, drinking-places of every kind and every quality — a fanfare of 
voices and music and chinking glassefs and aiiy laughter, from sun- 
down to midnight, an illumination two leagues long. 

Who can wonder that the stranger, blinded by these earthly splen- 
dors, steeped in the intoxication that hangs in the very air of such a 
city, should have ignored the storm-clouds brooding over the impe- 
rial palace — loss of honor beyond all measure, loss of men by thou- 
sands, and of money by millions yonder in Mexico, loss of prestige 
by the inglorious neutrality of last year, loss of popularity as shown 
by every new plebiscite ? The stranger saw no clouds in that sum- 
mer sky, dreamed not of a besieged and famished Paris in -which 
these very white streets should run with blood, these fair white 
stones should be torn up and heaped into barricades, on which men 
should fight to extinction, hand to hand, brother against brother, in 
the fury of Civil War. He saw only the glory of tlie Avorld’s carni- 
val, he heard only the sounds of music and dancing, of feasting and 
revelry. 

One of the most magnificent spectacles in that season of splendor 
was the review of ‘the Imperial Guard, in the Bois de Boulogne, 
when sixty thousand men, under the command of Mar^chal Can- 
robert, assembled on that very spot where three years later William 
of Prussia, looking on to-day as guest and ally, was to review his 
own troops amid tlie gloom of a surrendered city. The racecourse 
was the scene of the review, and a mighty crowd covered the plain. 
Lady Constance Danetree’s barouclie was stationed in the front rank 


240 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


of carriages, and not remote from the imi^erial party ; anil the 
seat opposite Lady Constance, banked in by huge bouquets of Dijon 
roses and stephanotis, sat Amelie Jarze, looking her prettiest in a 
be be toilet of cream-colored China crape and j^ale pink rosebuds. 

She was there by one of those series of little accidents which a 
girl of nous knows how to arrange beforehand, and she was assuredly 
not there by the desire of her hostess. Poor Madame Jarze and Hor- 
tense were sitting in their hired victoria afar off in an outer fringe 
of disreputable smartness and shabby respectability, voitures de 
ifface crowded with petits bourgeois and their families, victonas and 
four-in-hands gorgeous with the queens and princesses, the dowagers 
and sweet girl graduates of the demi-monde. But Amelie was here 
among the top strawberries in the basket, in the midst of la socieie 
rup, here smiling sweetly at the woman whom of all women upon 
this earth she most hated. She had contrived it all herself — had 
contrived to put Lady Constance in a position in which it was im- 
possible not to ask her — and she was here triumphant. The end in 
her mind justitied the means. For the rest, having once been 
cajoled into giving the invitation, Lady Constance thought no more 
about it. The Jarze girl was bad style, but not much worse than 
that princess of an Austrian house who was then one of the leading 
lights of Parisian society, and whom Theresa, the star of the Alcazar, 
had described as “ aussi canaille que moi.” 

“ Poor mother ! ” sighed Amelie, standing up to survey the crowd 
through her ff eld-glasses and perceiving afar off that outermost 
circle of shabbiness and finery, something like the hill-side opposite 
the grand stand at Epsom. ‘ ‘ Pm afraid she and Hortense will see 
nothing but a cloud of dust and those dreadful people in the drags.” 

Those “ dreadful people ” were the very ladies whose gowns, 
coiffures, and manners this damsel from the Sacre Coeui’ had taken 
pains to imitate. 

“ How grave the Czar looks ! ” exclaimed Amalie, wheeling round 
to survey the imperial group. “Not quite happy. I suq»pose an 
Emijeror of Kussia never feels himself quite secure from bullet or 
dagger. They say the police have been watching him ever since ho 
came to Paris, that he is encircled with an invisible band of detec- 
tives.” 

Constance shrugged her shoulders with a preoccupied air. Em- 
perors and dynasties were of no moment to her. She was intent 
upon discovering one face amid that vast crowd — Ishmael’s face— the 
face of the man whom she had met several times in society since the 
beginning of April, but who had never, so far as she could tell, 
taken the faintest trouble to bring about any such meeting. Taking 
liis conduct as an evidence of his feelings, she could but think that 
he regarded her with supreme indiflbrence ; yet she did not so think. 
To a sensitive woman there are other tokens of affection, subtler, 
more precious than outward actions; and in Constance Danetree’s 
heart there was a growing faith in Ishmael’s love for her. He might 
have his own motives for holding himself in check; he might'be 
afraid of the difference in their social rank, doubtful of her as a 
woman of fashion, perhaps even a coquette. He might be only bid- 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


241 


iiig liis time. It was not for her to precipitate matters. Not by one 
tone or one look had the well-trained woman of society betrayed 
herself. Even Amelie’s eyes, sharpened by jealousy, could not pene- 
trate beneath the mask of good manners with which a well-bred 
woman hides her feelings. 

He was there — there among the elite of the assemblage. He came 
to Lady Constance’s barouche presently, after having stojrped at 
ever so many carriages on the way. The review began while he was 
standing there, detained by Amelie, who held him by her incessant 
jn-attle, as the mariner held the wedding guest ; and the troops once 
in motion it would have been difficult for him to recross to his former 
jdace. So he stayed, and stood beside Lady Constance’s carriage 
during the whole of the show. Other jieople came and went, with 
most of whom he had a bowing acquaintance, as one of the most 
conspicuous men in Paris. 

“ You have never been in the army, monsieur ?” asked Lady Con- 
stance. 

“ I have not enjoyed that distinction. I drew a lucky number at 
the beginning of my career, when to have served would have hin- 
dered my making my way in life. So far I was lucky.” 

“ Have you not been lucky in all things ? ” 

“No, Lady Constance, not in all things.” 

‘ ‘ And yet you have the reputation of being the most fortunate 
man in Paris.” 

“ In Paris to have made money counts for good fortune — every- 
thing else is an insignificant detail in the mind of your thoroughbred 
Parisian. ^Ye are a progressive nation. The government of Louis 
Philippe preached only one doctrine — ‘ Make money.’ The emperor 
goes further and says, ‘ Make money — anyhow you can.’ ” 

This little conversation set Lady Constance wondering. What 
was that portion of life in which the great contractor had been un- 
fortunate ? Her womanly heart, answen'ng for her, made sure that 
this misfortune must have something to do with love. He had loved 
unwisely— unhappily — or he had loved one who was dead. The old 
heart-wounds were only half healed, perhaps, or only just beginning 
to be healed under a new influence. 

The show w'as over ; a gorgeous pageant of a few hours, ending- 
in the golden light of a Juno afternoon. The imperial carriages 
were moving slowly away. Lady Constance’s coachman preiwed 
to follow. 

“ Shall we take you back to Paris ? ” she asked, and Ishmael ac- 
cepted. 

For the first time he seated himself in that perfectly hung barouche, 
displacing Am61ie and her flower-garden. The young lady now 
nestled by her hostess’ side. 

It was lovely weather and the wood was like fairyland, a fairy- 
land of fine carriages and fine clothes, smiling faces, light laughter, 
beauty, wit, audacity, charlatan, knave, dupe, fool, speculator, 
trickster, gamester, adventurer of every type— but all of such a brill- 
iant surface, with a flush of hot-house flowers, making a glow of 
pure Iji-ight color everywhere, as in a floral carnival. 

IG 


242 


AJS ISHMAELITE. 


Suddenly, amid the rhythmical trot of horses and musical jingle 
of harness, amid the voices and laughter, and the splash of the 
waterfall yonder, there came from the front — where the imperial 
carriages headed the train — the rej^ort of a pistol. Then a sudden 
uproar — a tumult of voices. 

What was it ? Only an attempt to shoot the Czar, made and failed 
in ignominiously by one Berezowski, a mad young Polish enthusiast 
— an honest, simple youth of eighteen summers, who thought God 
had charged him with the divine mission of destroying a despot 
and liberating a people. Unhappily there are many such false 
Christs, whose doom is for the most part the wheel or the scaffold, 
wild horses, or the stake. Young Berezowski was luckier, and es- 
caped with penal servitude, much to the displeasure of the Czar, 
who did not relish this episode in his hospitable entertainment at 
the Elysee. 

The crowd would have massacred Berezowski on the spot, in a 
tumult of enthusiasm for that monarch against whom France had 
been in arms twelve years ago ; but the police intervened and car- 
ried the lad off, serenely enduring the anguish of a wrist shattered 
by the bursting of his pistol, and mildly protesting his regret at 
being troublesome to a land which had given him a home and a 
livelihood, and which he loved for its own sake. 

The tumult, the confusion, the riding to and fro of general offi- 
cers, gendarmes, functionaries of all grades, gorgeous in scarlet and 
gold and iffumed helmets, lasted some time, during which the triple 
rank of carriages stopped. 

The reports which reached Lady Constance Danetroo at about half 
a quarter of a mile from the theatre of the event were various and 
conflicting. First she was told — by her English footman who knew 
a little French — that the Czar was killed and the Emperor Napoleon 
dangerously wounded. Then a i^asser-by informed her that the 
Empress. Eugenie had thrown herself in front of the Czar and re- 
ceived the bullet a X)leine poitrine. Then came a rumor that one of 
the young i^rinces was shot throu<?h the head. Finally, Ishmael, 
who had alighted and walked to the scene of action, returned with 
the reassuring news that the bullet had only pierced the nostrils of 
a horse and slightly wounded a lady on the opposite side of the road. 
The second barrel had burst in the would-be-as.sassin’s hand. 

At last the carnages rolled onward again. The Emperor of all 
the Russias was safe in the Elysee by this time. The sun was an 
liour nearer the west. 

“ I tliink I must give you some tea after all this dust and excite- 
ment,” said Lady Constance, smiling at Ishmael, as her carriage 
rolled past her shrubberies of acacias and magnolias, and stopped 
under the large marquee in front of her hall door. “ But perhaps 
you do not drink tea. l"^ou would rather go on to the boulevard and 
enjoy your afternoon absinthe.” 

“ I never take absinthe, and I am very fond of tea a I’Anglaise.” 

“ And mine is caravan tea.” 

They aliglited, and Ishmael, for the first time in his life, crossed 
Constance Danetree’s threshold, crossed it with i-eluctant feet, yet 


.4iy ISIIMAELITE. 


243 


unable to resist the most potent temptation that had ever assailed 
him in the whole course of his practical, straightforward life. 

He had been in many of the most elegant houses in Paris, had seen 
pictures and statues and flowers, and marble iDavements, silk and 
velvet, cloth of gold, embroideries from China and Persia, Japan and 
Nagpore, ad nauseam ; and yet, looking around Lady Constance 
Danetree’s salon, with its adjacent boudoir, visible through a broad 
archway across which a tawny velvet curtain hung carelessly, it 
seemed to him as if he had never seen the true elegance of home life 
before. Here was an interior stamped with the individuality of the 
woman who lived in it — her piano, unlike other pianos, her book- 
stands, and low, luxurious chairs, her portfolios of prints and pho- 
tographs— unlike other book-stands and chairs and portfolios — her 
grouping of hot-house flowers, the table at wdiich she wrote, her 
work-tables, her cozy corners, half in shadow, yet glowing Avith 
Oriental color, her 02'>en fire^Dlace with its bank of exotic greenery 
and rare old amber Satsuma jars — everywhere the traces of a Avom- 
an’s taste ; and, like a note of life and friendliness, the three dogs 
grouped on a huge polar bear-skin in front of the wide sunny AvindoAvs. 

Tavo tall and solemn footmen, of the true Danish breed, brouglit 
in a tea-table with Queen Anne urn and old English china, and 
Lady Constance 2:)oured out the tea. Her version of le five o’clock 
was a much simj^ler reading than that of Mine. Arnould, on the en- 
tresol in the Chamjis ElysOe. Amelie squatted gracefully on a Ioav 
stool at Constance’s feet. 

“ I think this English institution of five o’clock is jiositively charm- 
ing,” said she. “ It is simjily the iileasantest hour of the day ; but 
I never expected to see a business man like Monsieur Ishmael Avaste 
his timeujion drinking tea with tAvo ladies.” 

“It is once in a lifetime,” answe/ed Ishmael, with his grave 
smile, a beautiful smile Avhich lighted the strongly marked face Avith 
a sudden gloAV. “ There must be an oasis in every desert.” 

“ And you call this a green sjiot in life — to sit here in Lady Con- 
stance’s salon : you Avho have the key to all the finest houses in 
Paris.” 

“I do not profess to have any such key, mademoiselle.” 

“Oh, but you have. You have the . golden key which opens all 
the doors of the great world. You and the Eothschilds can go any- 
Avhere, do anything, say anything ; Avhatever you do or say will be 
right. If my father Avere only like you, instead of being a petty of- 
ficial, iDettily imid.” 

She gave a little imiDatient sigh and stoi^ped herself, feeling that 
she had gone too far. “After all, money is a poor thing,” she 
said ; “it cannot buy happiness. I know some of my school-felloAvs 
married for money Avho are miserable. Heaven protect me from 
such a fate as theirs. ” 

“ But are not all marriages noAvadays more or less a question of 
ways and means ? ” inquired Ishmael. “ I have only studied the in- 
stitution from afar, as a disinterested obsei’A’^er ; yet it seems to me 
that Avedlock under the second Empire means the union of incomes 
rather than of hearts.” 


244 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


‘‘ And yon can see such a state of things without hoiTor *? ” ex- 
claimed Amelie, while Lady Constance Danetree listened in silence, 
reclining in her chair, one white tapering hand caressing the Pome- 
ranian’s still whiter coat, the left hand, still gloved, supporting her 
finely rounded chin — self-possessed, self-contained, the image of 
passionless womanhood. 

“ It cannot concern me what stakes the players play for — hearts or 
diamonds,” answered Ishmael ; “lam only a looker-on at the game. 
I shall never marry.” 

Not a ripple of emotion stirred Constance Danetree’s features. 
The hand which smoothed the favorite’s silken coat never faltered in 
its slow, monotonous movement ; there was not a quiver of sculp- 
tured eyelids or sculptured lips. The face — statue-like in its calm 
beauty — betrayed nothing. 

And yet this deliberate utterance of a deliberate resolve was like a 
blow struck at the heart of the woman who sat there in such statu- 
esque repose, caressing her lapdog. It meant the fall of her castle 
in the air, the end of all her dreams. It meant, perhaps, that she 
had been duped and fooled by her own vanity. For Amelie the 
blow was no less crushing ; and she was not so skilled in the con- 
cealment of her feelings, or, it may be, was wanting in the heroic 
temperament. 

“ That is a resolution pour rire,” she exclaimed, with a little half- 
hysterical laugh. “Whenever, in my brief experience, I have 
heard a man or woman solemnly announce the determination never 
to marry, I have generally discovered afterward that he or she was at 
that very moment on the high road to the altar. A widower usually 
vows as much, and you will own tliat the widower who swears hardest, 
who tells you that his heart lies l)uricd in the grave of his dead wife, 
is always the first to marry again. It is a fatal symptom.” 

“ There are men who swear for the love of sweaiing,” answered Ish- 
mael. “ There are circumstances of my jmst life, the bitter memories 
of a great sorrow, which render marriage impossible for me. You 
may believe, mademoiselle, that for once in your life you have heard 
a man swear in good faith. I shall keep my vow.” 

He took up his hat and cane, and offered his hand to Lady Con- 
stance, who half rose, with a delicious air of languor and fatigue, 
and put a cool, white hand in his. She could but notice that his 
Avas cold as ice. 

“ Forgive me for Avearying you with such egotistical prosings,” he 
said as they shook hands. 

“ You have not Avearied me ; I am always interested in my felloAV- 
creatures.” 

“ But you are looking pale and exhausted ; I fear it is I who haA^e 
tired you.” 

“Not at aril. The sun and the dust and the shoAv have been tire- 
some, that is all. Good-by.” 

She gaA^e him a gracious courtesy as he went out of the door. 

Good-by love, good-by hope, good-by the fair future we tAvo Avere 
to have shared ! That Avas Avhat was meant by those two syllables, 
sjioken by smiling lips. 


AN I8I1MAELITE. 


245 


‘‘She could not have cared a straw for him,” thought Amelie, 
watchful of a rival even in the midst of her own agitations. 

“ My dear Amelie, the horses are waiting to take you home, and 
it is had for them to stand long after such a day,” said Constance. 
“ Do you think you would mind going at once ? lam due at a din- 
ner at the English Embassy, and then there is the ball at the Hotel 
de Ville, where, I suppose, I must put in an appearance ; and I ought 
to rest a little.” 

“ How'good of you to keep the horses for me ! I am going this in- 
stant,” replied Amelie. “ You talk of the ball as if it were a bur- 
den ; and they say it will be the grandest sight that has ever been 
seen in Paris, and yet nothing to comjDare with the ball to-morrow 
night at the Tuileries. Papa has told us all about it — he has had a 
good deal to do with the arrangements. The gardens are to be illu- 
minated with fifty thousand gas jets/ and there will be the electric 
liglit and Bengal fires — a perfect fairy-hand.” 

“ My experience of such balls is that one has to sit in one’s car- 
riage for two or three hours, within a quarter of a mile of the palace 
gates hearing gendarmes give imjjossible orders, and coachmen 
grumble and swear ; and that one finally reaches the scene of the 
festival in a state of utter exhaustion,” said Constance, wearily. 
“But I suppose I shall have to go.” 


CHAPTER XXXI. 

“these aee the men that devise mischief.” 

Ishmael turned his back upon the imperial wood with its villas 
and gardens and its three broad avenues. The triumphal arch was 
all aglow with the western sunlight. The lawns and flowers, the 
foliage and fountains of the Chamjis Elysees were all stee^ied in the 
same golden light. The train of carriages was still rolling on east- 
ward, westward ; these back to the city, those out to the wood, 
carrying happy idle people to dine al fresco at the restaurant by the 
cascade. The footways were crowded with pedestrians ; the toy 
shops and sweet shoj^s, and open-air Alcazar, the Pavilion de I’Hor- 
loge, all the singing places and pleasure haunts were beginning to 
glitter with lamps even in the midst of that golden light. Children 
were playing, organs grinding, flowers beathing perfume, clouds of 
dust shining like a golden haze, a 'world of gladness and sunset glory. 

Ishmael walked at a brisk pace through the crowd, looking neither 
to the right nor the left, hardly conscious of the gayety around him, 
the throng of passers-by. His eyes were fixed, looking steadily in 
front of him, yet unseeing. He was very pale, and his brows were 
set in a line that meant sternest resolve. 

Yes, he had spoken. He had told the loveliest, the proudest, the 
most exquisite of women that it was not for him to aspire to her 
hand. He had told that one woman whom he passionately loved 
that it was for him to stand aloof from her ; that even were she 


246 


AJV ISIIMAELITE, 


temi)ted to stoop from her dazzling height of pride and beauty so 
low as to crown him with her love, he could not accept the blessing 
and the glory. His fate was fixed, a destiny of loneliness and self- 
sacrifice. 

What else could he have done ? he asked himself this evening in 
the sundown, as he threaded the crowd, now across the broad place 
of fountains and statues, by symbolic Strasbourg, a marble maiden, 
with a coronet of towers, to be crowned and garlanded later by a 
frantic crowd, swearing to fight and fall for her, and anon to be 
veiled in sables — an emblem of shame and mourning — past the 
Tuileries, the chestnut groves, under which children were flying 
bright-colored balloons — the shining windows, the gilded railings, 
while yonder, across the river, shone the golden dome of the soldiers’ 
hospital whence came beat of drum and blare of trumpet sounding 
the retraite. Ishmael moved athwart the familiar scene without see- 
ing it, and walked at a still faster jiace along the Hue de Hivoli under 
the shadow of the Louvre. 

What else could he have done but declare his resolve never to 
marry, he whose runaway wife might be living still, might come 
forth Horn her hiding-place to claim him on his wedding-day, were 
he weak enough to wed again without due evidence of her death. 
He had had no such evidence yet, though he had taken considera- 
ble trouble to obtain it ; and he might have hugged himself in the 
belief that since Paquerette had given no sign of her existence dur- 
ing the last seven years she must needs be dead. Were she living 
and in poverty, she would most likely have asked for aid from his 
wealth ; were she living and prosperous she would surely have been 
more easily traced. His search for the betrayer had been as earnest 
as his search for the victim, but neither quest had succeeded. This 
was how he had argued the question in his own mind over and over 
again, and yet the thing was all dark to him, and he told himself 
that as a man of honor he was forbidden to many, ho was still the 
husband of Paquerette. 

And to marry her, Constance Danetree, at such a hazard, to sully 
her proud and pure name by doubtful nuptials — no, that he could 
not do. Better to sulfer the anguish of resigning her — better to 
bear his own lonely lot to the end. 

He followed the Eue de Kivoli as far as the Palais Boyal, and 
thence struck into the Eue St. Honore, along which busy thorough- 
fare, brightening already with lamplit shop windows, he made liis 
way to that still busier quarter of Paris which lies around the great 
glass pavilions of the central markets, and the old Pointe St. 
Eustache, historic ground, where once the swollen soil of the ceme- 
tery of the Innocents seethed and rankled with the rotting dead, and 
sent forth its plague poison to slay the living ; where the heaped-up 
coffins, thrust one above another, crammed and gorged the loath- 
some earth until by the very weiglit of its putrid burden it burst the 
wall of an adjacent dwelling house, and scared the occupant by the 
spectacle of a cellar filled with the ghastly relics of the dead. 

At a corner of the Eue Pirouette Ishmael entered a low, dark 
wine-shop, where half a dozen blouses sat drinking and smoking in 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


247 


the dim light. He nodded to the woman at the connter, passed 
through the shop, and went up a winding staircase in the corner. 

A man stopped him at the top of the stairs. “ Es tu solide ? ” he 
asked. 

“ Jusqu’a la Kue de Jerusalem,” replied Ishmael, and passed on 
to a large room on the first floor, whence came the sound of a reso- 
nant voice and a dense cloud of rank tobacco. 

He pushed open the door and went in. The room was crowded 
with men of all ages, and by their aspect of almost every trade and 
profession ; men in blouses and men in broadcloth ; bronzed and 
rugged men who work with their hands ; pallid weaklings who work 
with their brains. The blouses and weather-tanned faces predom- 
inated in number and bulk, but the pallid brows and well-worn 
frock-coats were the stronger influence. 

These were the speakers, the dreamers, the enthusiasts — the Uto- 
pians who believed that this Society of the Cercle du Prolo, 
founded in 1831 under another name, now about to be affiliated with 
the International, was to bring about that socialist millennium of 
equal fortunes, of direct legislation by the people, of which French 
workmen have been thinking ever since they learned how to think. 

Thirteen years ago Ishmael had been a voice of power in a certain 
secret society called La Loque, out of which had been developed 
this club of the Prolo. He had been on the side of temperance, 
thrift, moderation— all those virtues which make the artisan class 
strong in the land. He had been popular when he was a journey- 
man toiler like the majority, and wore a blouse, which was only ever 
so much cleaner than the normal blouse. The time came when he 
wore a coat, and was known to be a rich man employing others to 
work for him. Then his popularity began to wane. His moder- 
ation was called half-heartedness, his loyalty to the old ideas was 
doubted, and his strong common-sense, which saw both sides of 
every question, was scouted as the Qiaven spirit of the bourgeois, 
who thrives and fattens upon the sweat of other men’s brows. 

He spoke, and spoke bravely, bore the brunt of his old comrades’ 
disfavor, bearded the lion of Socialism in his den, showed his friends 
where they were unwise, where they asked too much of the state 
and of their masters ; but a time came when he was saluted with a 
storm of groans and hisses, wlien his success was cast in his face as 
a reproach and a disgrace — when lie was accused of underhand deal- 
ings, falsehood, dishonesty even. He flung these vile insinuations 
back upon his accusers, challenged them to show a single stain 
upon his career, and shook the dust of the club from his feet. And 
now to-night he came to his old place, after an interval of years, 
summoned by a circular which had been sent to him, in common 
with all the other Prolos, to invite discussion as to the proposed 
affiliation of the club to the gi-eat International Society, founded in 
1862, encouraged by the favor of the emperor himself, and already 
a mighty force in civilized Europe. 

The meeting of to-night was a feverish one. There were some 
among the Prolos who resented the loss of their own individuality, 
the lessening of their own importance, which must needs follow this 


248 


AN ISUMAELITE. 


amalgamation of tlie old and small society with the new and great 
one. These cockle-shells did not care to lose their own sense of im- 
portance by being enrolled in a fleet of three-masters. Whelmed in 
the great whirlpool of European Democracy, this little club of Paris- 
ian orators w^ould be as a handful of hazel-nuts flung into the Horse- 
shoe Falls. 

There were some who dreaded this loss of individuality for van- 
ity’s sake, others who shrunk from it for principle’s sake, and who 
revolted against the iron discipline, the mechanism involved in the 
Karl-Marxian theory of Socialism, and among these latter was Ish- 
mael. 

He who had not crossed the threshold of that room for seven 
years came there to-night to protest against the contemplated change, 
ile stood in the group by the doorway, unnoticed and unknown, 
until the speaker had finished, and then he quietly shouldered his 
way through the crowd and advanced to the tribune. He took off 
his hat and faced the assembly, taller by half a head than the major- 
ity — a man of men. 

Dressed as he had dressed for the review, in a coat of finest cloth 
and newest fashion, with the gardenia which he had put in his but- 
tonhole in the Rue Castiglione, remembering how Lady Constance 
Danetree had worn these white waxen blossoms on her bosom on each 
occasion of their meeting, plainly and soberly clad withal, with the 
air of statesman and thinker rather than of fribble or fop — yet the 
look of him as he stood before them in the flush and power of his 
manhood set the teeth of those keen democrats on edge. This was 
the capitalist, the “ bourgeois,” the hated one, the employer of labor, 
the man who wallowed in wealth which represented the sweat of 
other men’s brows. 

An angry murmur ran round the crowded room like the faint 
rumbling of distant thunder, and then a solitary hiss, sharp, venom- 
ous, flew out at him liked a forked tongue, seemed to quiver in the 
air, and then to strike straight at his breast. 

“I am not afraid of your hisses, friends,” he said, “but lam 
sorry for your want of sense. I am not here to plead the cause of 
capital against labor, the right of the employer as against the rights 
of the employed. This is an old question which we have argued 
before to-night. I am here to protest against the amalgamation of 
this little, honest-hearted society with the most pernicious and fatal 
association which ever threatened the peace of civilized Europe.” 

This was a bold attack ; for in 1867 the International was in the 
flower of its youth. There had been a congress of workmen of all 
nations at Geneva ; there was to be a congress at Lausanne in Sep- 
tember. The International was on the side of universal peace ; it 
promised a millennium for the working man and the world at large, 
it offered a dazzling prospect of equal rights ; the abolition of wages 
in favor of co-operatioi; ; the redemption of women from the neces- 
sity of labor ; free education ; universal enlightenment. For the old 
established journeyman’s tour of France, the German wanderjahr, 
was to be substituted the tour of Europe, enlarging the ideas of the 
mechanic by contact with foreign nations. 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


249 


The Internationale had so far acted with moderation, for while 
sustaining the metal workers in tlieii- long strike, and while putting 
upon its black books every firm which dismissed any member of the 
society, it had lifted up its voice boldly against the workmen at 
Iloubaix who destroyed their machinery and set fire to their work- 
shops. 

So far the society seemed to have acted only for good ; but behind 
the association of many men Ishmael saw the working of one mind, 
and that the mind of a dangerous visionary. He saw the shadow of 
German despotism, a des^Dotism of the socialist as perilous as the 
despotism of the monarch ; and it was against this that he spoke. 

He denounced Karl Marx and his theories, he indicated the dan- 
gers they involve, demonstrated l^heir falsehood, their imijossibility. 
The majority of his hearers knew little or nothing about Karl Marx 
and his system, but they were most of them prejudiced against an 
old comrade who had grown rich. Ishmael represented the Patron, 
the Bourgeois, the enemy. His speech provoked a storm of hisses, 
groans, abuse. But the full sonorous voice thundered on, every sen- 
tence coming with the force of a sledge-hammer. Dauntless and un- 
daunted he stood before them to the last, till he had said his ulti- 
mate word ; then, with a smile, half friendly, half scornful, ho 
bowed to his auditors, amongst whom but a small minority were in 
his favor, put on his hat and left the room. 

It was past nine when he w'ent out into the network of old streets, 
and the illuminated dial of St. Eustache shone pale in the summer 
twilight. The year was at that lovely season when night is almost 
unknown. The old streets of Paris had a dusky look in the gray 
eventide, but they were not yet dark. 

Ishmael had left the club about ten minutes when a man close be- 
hind him said in a low, confidential voice : 

“ Has Monsieur Ishmael forgotten an old member of the Cercle 
du Prolo, whom he once employed in a delicate matter?” 

Ishmael turned quickly and recognized a man who had been 
made known to him thirteen years ago as a member of that semi- 
professional fraternity which ferrets out domestic secrets — the police 
of private life — employed as his agent in the endeavor to find 
Paquerette. The man had travelled half over France upon that quest, 
had spent a good deal of his employer’s money, without arriving at 
any successful result. He had been apparently on the scent many 
times, had brought back information that seemed genuine, but the 
end was failure ; and after paying him from first to last a consider- 
able sum, Hshmael had dismissed him seven years ago, very much 
disposed to think him an impostor. 

And now tliis same man, whom he had not seen for years, but of 
whom, by a strange coincidence, he liad been thinking within the last 
two hours— this man, Dumont, stood before him in the June twilight, 
breathing absinthe, and clothed from head to foot with shabbiness. 

It seemed to Ishmael as if tlie man had sprung out of the very 
paving stones in answer to his own thought — had arisen from the 
ground at his bidding, like an evil spirit at the touch of a necroman- 
cer’s wand. He had despised the man for his profligate habits in 


250 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


years gone by, respecting him just a little at the same time for his 
cleverness. *He had treated him with a certain familiarity and good 
fellowship, as between men of the same opinions linked by the same 
brotherhood. But the gulf between them had widened since that 
time. It w'as within the last seven years that Ishmael had allow’ed 
himself to be tempted into society, had taken the place to which his 
wealth and his talents entitled him. And while Ishmael had taken 
a higher position, the man Dumont had sunk to a lower grade — the 
grade of the shirtless and houseless — the lost tribes of Paris, wdiose 
children sleep under bridges and in shadowy doorways, who eat gar- 
bage, and whose life is a iDerpetual game of hide-and-seek with the 
police. 

He w'as a strange-looking man, this Dumont — strange because, 
despite his threadbare coat and greasy hat, his absence of linen, and 
frouzy neckerchief — despite the traces of drunkenness and debauch- 
ery, too palpable in the tallowy tints of the soddened face, the in- 
flamed eyelids, and purple lips — despite the livery of vice, the creat- 
ure looked as if once, in some remote period of life, he had been a 
gentleman; he had the intonation of a gentleman; he had the 
arched instep, the well-cut features, the lean taj^ering hand and 
wrist of a gentleman. For the rest he w’as so squalid and so sickly 
a spectacle as he stood there in the cold gray light that he might he 
taken for a man who had died and been buried, and had been dug- 
out of the common grave to be galvanized into a factitious life by 
some kind of scientific jugglery. 

“What do you know of the Prolos? ” asked Ishmael, coiitemiitu- 
ously. 

“What do I not know? I have been one of them for six-and- 
thirty years. I was one of them — ay, and a leading light, too — jd 
the foLindation of the society in ’31, when the w-orkmen of Paris be- 
gan to discover that the glorious Revolution of July did not mean 
socialism, that they were no better off under the King of theFrencIi 
than they had been under the King of France, when that great reso] - 
voir of humanity, the Faubourg Saint Antoine, began to grow' 
ruffled and stormy. In those days the Proletaires Avere a little band 
of men Avho met once a week in a wine-shop in the Rue Sainte Mar- 
guerite, and who called themselves the Societe de la Loque. ‘ La 
loque en avant ’ was their w-ar-ciy. I Avas a speaker then, Monsieur 
Ishmael ; yes, by heaA-en, as eloquent an orator as you Avere to-night. 
I have ahvays been true to my colors ; I am true "to them noAv. i t 
is you Avho are false. Monsieur Ishmael ; you aaLo have growm lioh 
under the rule of a despot and have left off caring for the cause of 
liberty.” 

“ This is no place for talking politics,” said Ishmael. “You had 
better coni(e to my house in the Place Royale tw’o hours hence, and 
I Avill talk as much as you like. You look poor, Dumont.” 

“ It Avonld be very strange if I looked rich.” 

“ Wcdl, I may be able to give you some profitable employment, 
poihaps. You may as Avell dine or sup in the meantime.” 

“It Avill be at least a novel sensation,” ansAvered the man called 
Dumont, acccx)ting Ishmael’s napoleon. 


AN ISmiAELITE. 


251 


Two hours later the man was ushered into Ishmael’s library in the 
Place Royale, a spacious panelled room, furnished with heaw oak 
book-cases, solid oak chairs and an enormous office table, covered" with 
papers, plans and drawings, and lighted by two large shaded lamps. 

“ Sit down,” said Ishmael, pointing to an armchair by the empty 
hearth. “JYou told me yonder two hours ago that I was false to the 
cause of my fellow- workmen. I tell you that I am as true to that 
cause now that I am a rich man as ever I was as a poor man. But 
I do not give in my adherence to Karl Marx and his crew.” 

“ You had better,” answered the other, dr^dy. “ They are coming 
to the front.” 

“ I am no collectivist.” 

“No, you are a rich man; you area capitalist; you believe in 
your divine right to j^rofit by other men’s labor, to wallow in accu- 
mulated capital — which is only another name for unpaid labor — to 
heap up a colossal fortune by the help of other men’s thews and 
sinews.” 

“ I have not spared my own labor of head or hand. There might 
have been neither work nor wages for those other men if my enter- 
prise had not set the ball rolling.” 

“ No ; but you have made millions, and they are exactly where they 
were before the ball began to roll,” answered the man. “ That’s what 
Karl Marx and his crew want to put an end to — the aggregation of 
profits in the pockets of one man. Why should the keystone of the 
arch be a diamond and all the other stones only common stone?” 

“Perhaps because without the keystone the arcli would tumble to 
pieces.” 

“ Ah ! but we shall construct all future arches on a better princi- 
l^le. Every great enterprise shall be undertaken by a body of men, 
each risking his labor, each reaping an equal share of the jwofits. 
Every manufactory shall be carried on by the operatives. Wealth 
shall be distributed.” 

“ Utopian ! ” exclaimed Ishmael. “ The universe itself was formed 
from a nucleus. There must be a beginnings — there must be a mas- 
ter mind — there must be rich men and poor men — under empire or 
republic. Make all men equal at sunrise, and at sundown there 
would be differences. And again, that concentration of capital, of 
which you socialists complain, is, after all, the great bond of union. 
In co-operative labor the indiridual risks would not be large enough 
to insure that intensity of purpose without which there can be no 
success in trade. The capitalist takes gigantic risks and works 
harder than any of his men. If there come the menace of ruin it is 
he who must face the dark hour, grapple with danger and overcome 
it. Would a herd of men, held together by the vague chances of 
divided profit — never sure of their bread — meet misfortune as bravely 
or work as earnestly ? I think not. But I did not ask you here to 
talk political economy. I want you to work for me again, as you 
worked for me some years ago.” 

“ To resume my hunt for your wife ? ” 

“ Yes. I want "to know where she is, if she still lives. I want the 
evidence of her death, if she is dead.” 


252 


AN mini AK LITE. 


“Difficult, rather. When I came uiDon the trace of her at Mar- 
seilles, a singer at a cafe-chan tant near the Quay, she had changed 
her name three times. She had made her debut at Brussels in opera 
as Mademoiselle Callogne ; she had acted with a strolling company 
as Madame Sevry ; she api;eared at Marseilles as Bonita— nothing but 
that, Bonita, or la Bonita. She was a star in the little company at 
the cafe-chantant, a favorite with an audience which consisted 
chiefly of seamen, mariners of all nations and of all colors — a fright- 
ful hole ! Your wife had left Marseilles when I discovered her 
identity with this Mademoiselle Bonita, a discovery which, as you 
may remember, I only made iTirough tracing Hector de Yalnois — no 
easy matter, for he had sunk pretty low by that time, this sprig of a 
noble house,” with infinite scorn. 

“And they had left Marseilles in a steamer for Valparaiso a week 
before you got there ! You employed an agent in that city to hunt 
them down, but without avail,” interrupted Ishinael, impatiently. 
“Why go over old ground?” 

‘ ‘ I am only xhcking up the threads, in order to make a fresh 
start,” answered the other. “ Let me see, Monsieur Ishinael, it was 
six years after madame ran away from you that I heard of her at Mar- 
seilles, and this Monsieur de Yalnois had been faithful to her all 
that time — through good and evil fortune. There was something 
very real in their passion, you see. It survived empty pockets, hard 
fare, the ups and downs of a Bohemian career. Monsieur earned a 
little money by his pen, madame a little by her pretty voice. Some- 
times one was ill, sometimes both were penniless. It was not a path 
of roses. But they were true to each other all those years.” 

“I did not invite you to be eloquent upon their fidelity. You 
heard of my wife’s intended voyage to Valparaiso. You never traced 
her beyond the steamer that was to take her there. I want you to 
take up the thread you dropped then ” 

“After seven years. It will not be easy. Strange that you should 
be indifferent to madame’s fate all these yeaa's, and suddenly awaken 
to an eager interest in it. Forgive my frankness ; I speak as Prolo 
to Prolo.” 

“ Life is full of strangeness, but you need not concern yourself 
about my motives. Find my wife for me, or bring me the evidence 
of her death, and I will give you five thousand francs over and above 
the salary you will draw from me while you are employed in the 
quest.” 

“ And my expenses? They will be stiff. I see no better way. of 
beginning than by going to Y'alparaiso. Where the local police 
failed, a man bred in Paris may succeed I ought to hnve gone 
there seven years ago — only your interest in the chase seemed to 
have cooled just then.” 

“I was wearied by failure. I trusted to the chapter of accidents. 
I thought that if she were penniless, deserted, she would come to 
me of her own accord for aid, for shelter — come to me as the hare 
winds back to her form, as her unhappy mother went to that wretched 
den in the Kue Sombreuil.” 

He said this in a low voice, to himself rather than to Dumont. 


AN miMAELITE. 


253 


The ex-police agent looked at him curiously, -vritli keenly ques- 
tioning eyes. 

“ The Rue Sombreuil,” he echoed. “ Did your wife’s mother ever 
live in the Rue Sombreuil ? ” 

“ She was born there, and died there in the flower of her youth 

a withered flower, cut down untimely. Why do you stare, man ? I 
never pretended that my wife was of good birth. I only told you 
that she wars a pure and innocent woman till that false friend of 
mine corrupted her. She was a daughter of the people, poor child. 
Her mother was a grisette, who ran away with some nameless scoun- 
drel ; her grandfather was an eb6niste, called Lemoine, a drunken 
D-ascal who lived from hand to mouth. Strange that so fair a flower 
should have come from so foul a seed ! My wife had the air and the 
instincts of a lady. "Who shall say that these things are hereditary ? ” 

“She may have had good blood on the father’s side,” said the 
other, thoughtfully. “ Do you know anything about her father ? ” 

“ Only that he was a villain. Enough of the jjast ; it is too full 
of pain and bitterness for me to be fond of talking about it. Find 
me my wife if you can. You know the reward.” 

“ That reward would be the same for the evidence of her death?” 
asked the other, with a faint sneer. “ You will give as much for 
bad news as for good ? ” 

“ As much for one as the other. I pay for certainty.” 


CHAPTER XXXII. 

“and the great man humbleth hevisele.” 

Many young women in the matrimonial hunting-field would have 
given up the chase on the strength of such a iwotest as that made 
by Ishmael, when in grave and deliberate accents he declared his 
determination to live and die a bachelor ; but that ardent young 
sportswoman, Amelie Jarze, was not so easily put off the scent. 
She was discouraged, disheartened, vexed, and angry— jealous of 
Lady Constance Danetree’s superior influence ; but she did not de- 
spair. She talked the subject over with her sister Hortense during 
one of those oases of friendly feeling which sometimes diversified 
the arid desert of sisterly antagonism. 

“ There must be something queer in his past life,” said the dam- 
sel, when she had described that little episode at the five o clock tea; 
— “a low intrigue, a low marriage even. He had such a gloomy 
air when he said that he should never marry— not the air of a man 
who does not wish to many, but of a man who dare not marry. 
There is a secret, I am certain. How strange that people should 
Imow so little about his antecedents. I have questioned everybody 
as far as I could venture ; but they all tell the same stoiy— a work- 
man, living among herds of other workmen out at Belleville— till 
seven vears ago, when he burst upon Paris like a meteor. He had 
a hand in all the improvements in Algiers. The emperor decorated 


254 : 


AN milMAELITE. 


him after the completion of a great railway bridge somewhere in 
Auvergne ; and then people found out that he was one of the greatest 
practical engineers of the age, and immensely rich, which was much 
more to the purpose ; and then everybody began to ask him to din- 
ner. Of his private life before that time peojole in society seem to 
know actually nothing.” 

“Why should they know anything?” asked Hortense, with a 
supercilious air. “What is a workman’s private life? — breakfast 
and dinner, and a bath on Sunday.” ' 

“ r want to know if he was married or single in those days.” 

“ I am told that Parisian workmen rarely marry,” said Hortense, 
placidly. 

It was in vain that Amclie speculated and wondered. She was 
no nearer arriving at any certainty as to the motive of Ishmael’s 
declaration. But she was determined not to relinquish the chase 
upon account of that assertion of his. After all it might mean liitlo 
or nothing — a mere expression of egotism, intended to enhance the 
importance of the speaker. 

“I supjiose he thinks we are all dying for him,” she said to her- 
self. 

She wrote him a little note on the next Wednesday — the dearest 
little note on the last fashionable jiaper, with a painted swallow in 
the corner — a note in an elegant slanting penmanship, a I’Anglaise, 
to remind him of Madame Jarze’s Thursdays, which he had so long- 
forgotten. A postscript informed him that Lady Constance Dane- 
tree had promised to put in an appearance early, and that Mademoi- 
selle Betsy, who had created a furor at a cafe-concert in the Fau- 
bourg du Temple, was to sing her famous song, “Decrochez-moi ca,” 
the song she had lately had the honor of singing at the Tuileries be- 
fore a cluster of crowned heads, and as a reward for which a costly 
bracelet had been clasped upon her wrist by the imperial fingers. 

Even the temptation thus held out did not attract Ishmael to the 
second floor in the Champs Elysees. He replied politely to Mademoi- 
selle Jarze’s letter, informing her that the numerous public works in 
which he was interested kept him closely occupied, and rendered 
visiting and all social pleasures impossible for him. There was a 
tone of decision about this letter which made even Amelie feel that 
the case was hopeless. 

“ There is somebody or someone in the background,” she said to 
herself ; “ and the man cannot marry. Well, as he evidently doesn’t 
want to marry me, I’m very glad he is not able to marry Lady Con- 
stance Danetrce.” 

AmCdiewas angry, chagrined, disappointed, but she was not the 
kind of young person to cut off her back hair, or clothe herself in 
sackcloth because of her disappointment, especiallv in the vear of 
an International Exhibition, when Paris, the capital of universal 
pleasures, was at its best and gayest. So, fiiiling the keen rapture 
of the chase, with Ishmael for her quarry, she wus fain to get'what 
amusement she could out of the easy admirers w-ithin her reach. 

Chief and most favored among these was Armand de Keratrv, the 
young man who had, in his own estimation, reached the climax of 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


255 


literary fame when he saw his first vaudeville produced with suc- 
cess at the Palais Koyal. From that hour he lived only to write 
vaudevilles. Waking and sleeping his mind labored upon jokes 
and cojplets, critical concatenations in the family circle, foolish or 
jealous husbands, giddy wives, amusingly treacherous friends. He 
liked Amelie, chiefly because she was of the Palais Eoyal type. She 
was his lay figure — the model for his giddy young wives and fool- 
ish virgins. He reproduced her impertinences, her unconscious, 
or affectedly unconscious, double-entendres, accentuated with the 
heightened -coloring of the theatre. He courted her society, was 
rarely missing from one of Madame Jarze’s Thursdays, albeit other 
gandins of his class affected to despise those functions. He was to 
be seen and heard whispering and giggling in a corner with Amelie ; 
while Madame Jarze, provided there were no more eligible man 
present, was amiably unconscious of their little indiscretions. 

“ They have known each other so long, foolish children,” she ex- 
plained ; “ they are like brother and sister.” 

As a successful playwright, on friendly terms with other play- 
VTights, Monsieiir de Keratiy got occasional admissions for one of 
the theatres which were not filled to overflowing, and these he pre- 
sented to Madame Jarze, thus keeping Amdlie an courant of that 
light dramatic art in which he hoped to distinguish himself. AmCdie 
soon acquired the knowingness of an experienced cabotine, and was 
eager to help her admirer with suggestions and inventions of her 
\ own active little brain. Pleased with her interest in his work, he 
brought his new vaudeville in his pocket when he dropped in for an 
extempore “five o’clock” of weak tea and Neapolitan biscuits chez 
Madame Jarze, having first refreshed himself with a polichinelle of 
vermouth or Curayoa at that much gayer “ five o’clock ” chez Madame 
Arnould, on the entresol. He read his last scene to Amelie in a 
little nook apart by the open window, and they laughed over Jiis 
rather racy jokes together in good fellowship. Armand treated the 
damsel altogether en bon gar9on, and did not apologize for the 
somewhat hazardous situations in his play. 

Having laughed over the final scene, she was eager to laiow when 
the new piece w'as to be produced. 

“ Not for ages,” replied Keratry. “It has to go to the teinturier 
first, to be remodelled ; that man has a knowledge of stage effects 
which I shall never acquire. It is as much an instinct as the result 
of long experience in dramatic criticism. He will pull all these 
scenes to pieces — cut out hundreds of my happiest lines — introduce 
half-a-dozen hackneyed situations, and make the thing actable. It 
is a humiliating process to undergo ; but it answered with my first 
play, and I hope it may answer with my second.” 

‘‘ I don’t believe anybody in Paris can know more about dramatic 
effect than you,” said Amelie, making her blue eyes as big as possi- 
ble, and favoring Armand with a look of childlike woi’sliip which 
she had hitherto reserved for Ishmael. “ How I should like to see 
tliis teinturier,” she added, with a touch of frivolity. “ He must be 
sucli a curious person.” 

“ He is a curious person, and lives in a curious den, and wears a 


25G 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


curious coat,” answered Armand, “but he is a kind of eccentricity 
that is uncommonly common in Paris — the eccentricity of hard- 
upishness, I’homme dans la deche.” 

“ Ah ! ” sighed Amelie, “ that is not an unknown complaint even 
in the Champs Elysees, and I think we get it in a severer form on 
this side of the Seine, because we have to keej) ujd appearances. But 
I should so like to see this poor Monsieur ” 

“Nimporte — that is the name he has given himself, Jean Nim- 
porte. But if he is the author of ‘ Mes Nuits Blanches,’ as I have 
been told he is, his real name is de Valnois, and he comes of a good 
Provencal family. He encourages no inquiries as to his antecedents, 
and never talks of his past life. He smokes like a factory chimney, 
and I believe he is softening his brains with a continual course of 
absinthe. I am really sorry for him ; one can see that he was once 
a gentleman.” 

“ Do bring him here some day.” 

“Bring him here ! Impossible ! He seldom goes out till after 
dark — he has not a presentable coat belonging to him ; and if I 
were to offer to give him one he w’ould throw it out on the landing, 
like that English philosopher you may have read of, who threw away 
a pair of new boots which benevolence left at his door when he was a 
penniless collegian. You can do nothing for a fallen angel like Jean 
Nimporte.” 

“ The more you say about him the more do I langmish to see him,” 
exclaimed Amelie. 

“ Nothing easier, if you are the bon gar^on I take you for.” 

“ I am always bon garcon with you.” 

“Then I will introduce you to my teinturier to-morrow. Tell 
madame that you are going to spend the morning with L^dy Con- 
stance Danetree. She will hardly object to your going so short a 
distance alone ; or if you must go under convoy of your bonne, leave 
the bonne at Lady Constance’s gate, and wait for me in the shrub- 
bery. I will be on the watch, and will join you directly the coast i.s 
clear. I shall have a fly waiting, and I will carry you off to the 
Qiiartier Latin, where you shall see life. We will breakfast together 
at one of the students’ restaurants, on the Boul. Mich.” 

“Boul. Mich.?” 

“ Boulevard St. Michel — popular contraction, that’s all ; and after 
breakfast we will go and see Jean Nimporte.” 

“ But it will be dreadful — to go out alone with you ” 

“A friend you have known almost from childhood ! ” 

“ To breakfast with you at a restaurant ” 

“ One must eat when one is hungry. AmCdie, you know you can 
trust me.” 

“With all my heart. But the world ! What would people say if 
they saw us together ? ” 

“ Only that you have tlie courage of your opinions, like those 
charming girls from New York, who are not afraid to be their own 
chaperons. The most innocent girls are always the boldest. Ee- 
niember Una. Besides, you can keep your veil'down.” ' 

“ I will come,” said Amelie, with a radiant smile ; “ and I sliall 


AN ISmiAELITE. 257 

not wear a veil. I liave the courage of my opinions, and one of 
those opinions is a perfect belief in you.” 

This was a master-stroke. Monsieur de Keratry was enchanted. 
The girl’s frankness, the spice of adventure that flavored the whole 
thing, the 'flattery implied in her confidence, all gratified that vanity 
■which is the ruling passion alike of fool and wise man. 

At eleven o’clock next morning, Amelie announced her intention 
of spending the day with Lady Constance Danetree. They had met 
at a reception the night before, and there was no reason why such an 
engagement should not have been made between them : so maternal 
suspicions were in no wise excited. There was a slight discussion 
as to whether Amelie could or could not go so far as the other side 
of the Arch without escort ; but as Monsieur Jarze had gone to his 
office, and the bonne’s services were urgently required indoors, it 
was decided that she could. 

Amelie dressed herself with a dainty simplicity, which became her 
better than her finest feathers. A holland frock, prettily made, and 
fresh from the laundress, a knot or two of scarlet ribbon to relieve 
the neutral tint of the frock, a little brown straw toque, with a 
bunch of scarlet berries, a holland parasol, and long Swede gloves at 
a time when long gloves were a distinction. 

“ You are simply perfect,” exclaimed Keratry, meeting her just 
beyond the Arch, in the broad sunny.space, whence diverge the ave- 
nues of the Parisian -w'ood. “ But I hope you don’t think you look 
like a grisette, or even a petite bourgeoise par example. I never saw 
you appear so distinguished.” 

He had a hired victoria in waiting, into which he handed his 
companion, a little frightened, in spite of her audacity, at the tre- 
mendous impropriety she wns about to commit, and expecting to see 
an acquaintance in every passer-by. Sh6 had no veil, but happily 
she had her large holland sunshade, and under that shelter she felt 
she was comparatively safe. The -victoria drove quickly along the 
Avenue de I’Alma, and across the bridge of the same name, past the 
Champs de Mars, across the Place des Invalides, and into the long 
sober Rue de Crenelle ; thence, by streets unknown to Amelie, to 
the square in front of St. Sulpice, and then into a labyrinth of 
narrow streets, which were as a new world to the adventurous 
maiden. 

“ I am not going to take you to the Boul. Mich, for breakfast,” 
saidArmand; “ it is too glaring and public. I am going to show 
you one of the oldest students’ haunts in Paris ” — antiquity in Paris 
usually meaning something under half a century — “a place that was 
famous in the days of the Restoration, the Pantagruel.” 

“ What a queer name,” said Amelie, whose knowledge of even the 
nomenclature of old French literature was of the smallest. 

The carriage stopped in front of a dingy-looking house in a dingy- 
lookiiig street, and" for the first time in her life. Mademoiselle Jarze 
was introduced to a popular cafe, a haunt of the student and the 
Bohemian. It was even a stranger scene than she had exi)ected to 
])ehold. 

The Pantagracl had changed curiously since' those days when 
17 


258 


AN T8HMAELITE. 


Louis-Philippe was at the beginning of his reign, and when Pere Le- 
nioine went thither to seek tidings of his lost daughter. It had been 
then a dingy and sufficiently commonplace establishment, consisting 
of two large low-ceiled rooms opening one into the other, furnished 
with numerous small tables, and boasting in the outer apartment a 
pewter-covered counter or bar, behind which the mistress of the 
house sat all day, and through the greater part of the night, en- 
throned among many-colored bottles and glasses, and with, per- 
chance, a few bunches of cheap flowers, making a central point of 
vivid color amidst the pervading dulness. 

Now, as in those days, the floor of the Pantagruel was sunk below 
the level of the street, and one descended to it by a stone step ; now 
as in the past, the outward aspect of this place of entertainment was 
darksome and uninviting ; but, heavens, what a change within ! 

The Pantagruel had caught the spirit of the times. That passion 
for luxury and decorative art which was the leading note of the Em- 
pire had seized upon this students’ cafe. The Pantagruel had 
caught the fever of romanticism, mediEevalism, Victor-Hugo-ism. 
The Pantagruel had become a page out of the book of the good old 
times, a house in which Villon himself might have drank deep out 
of a whistle tankard, and trolled his roundelays to an admiring cir- 
cle, whose sword-hilts clinked in cliorus to the poet’s glad refrain. 
The Pantagruel had gone in for “ culture.” 

The walls were rich in old tapestiy, and older Eouen pottery. 
Brass chandeliers and Gothic lanterns hung from the heavily-bossed 
ceiling. Each room had its fine old caiwed oak mantel-piece — its 
floreated iron dogs ; while in the corner reposed pikes and lances, 
that seemed as if only just put aside by some deep-drinking warrior 
of the Middle Ages, steel-clad from head to heel. t 

The discordant notes in this mediaeval interior were the mahogany 
tables, and a piano in front of the counter ; but this latter anachron- 
ism was pardoned for the sake of convi\dality when the Bohemians 
of litei'ature and art met in these halls at eventide to criticise and 
anathematize those rival runners who had outstripped them in the 
race of life. Here assembled the brigade of the threadbare coats 
and the shabby hats, the ragged regiment of culture and wit, the 
Rat(^s — tlie men who might have done so much better in this world 
if they had not been geniuses. 

In tlie dim Rembrandt gloom of this strange scene, lighted only 
by stained -glass casements, Amelie gazed and wondered. She had 
expected shabbiness, squalor even ; and, behold, she was in a cham- 
ber that might have been the banquet-hall of one of the old prince- 
nobles of France, at Blois or Plessy-les-Tours. Never out of the 
Louvre or the Hotel de Cluny had she seen such richness of decora- 
tion, such bi-ass and iron work, or such quaint pottery. 

It was happily an hour at whi(;h most of the students wore engao-ed 
in their colleges and hospitals, and when very few of the Rates v^ere 
up ; so Keratry and his companion had the" medieval refeotorv all 
to themselves. He chose a table in the embrasure of one of the 
painted windows, and placed Amelie with her back to the room, so 
that, had it been ever so full, that pretty little frimousse chiffonneo 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 259 

of hers would not have been revealed to the public, save in taking 
her departure. 

Arniand ordered a bottle of champagne as an accomx 3 animent to a 
delicate little dejeuner, which was served quickly and well, and 
Vv hich Amelie declared was even nicer than anything she had ever 
eaten at the Maison Doree or the Cafe Riche, whither she had been 
invited on occasion to some festive banquet before the opera, given 
by wealthy friends of her father— those good Samaritans of the 
upper classes, who seemed sent into the world to spend their money 
upon feeding the hungry with dinners at two napoleons a head. 

She protested at first against the creaming champagne, vowed she 
would take nothing but cofiee, or chocolate, but relented on seeing 
the primrose tinted wine breathe a cold dew u^X)!! the tall Flemisii 
goblet, and owned that it was nice, because it was so deliciously cool. 

“You must help me with the bottle,” said Armand, “or I shall 
have to drink it all myself, and then I shall sink unconscious under 
the table, and then you will have to pay the bill.” 

“That would be quite out of the question,” said Amalie, whose 
poor little purse was always empty. “ I should liave to stay here in 
jj ledge.;’ 

“ You see your danger, so you liad better do your duty.” 

Amelie did her duty, to tfie extent of one of those tall glasses of 
pale perfumed liquor, sipped daintily during the progress of the 
jneak- It was a w’arm morning, toward the close of June, and the 
iced champagne was not unpleasant. Keratry finished tlie bottle 
with ease. They dawdled a little over their wood strawberiies and 
black coffee ; the gentleman paid the bill, which the lady thought 
absurdly small ; and then they strolled away from the Pantagruel. 
The victoria liad been dismissed when they alighted. 

“What a dear quiet old jilace, this Pantagruel,” said Amelie. 

“ Very. Do you know, child, that in ’32 this quiet old place was 
the headquarters of Socialism. The enieute of that year was half 
hatched here ? ” 

AmCdie’s mind was not historical. She knew there had been a 
revolution, and a good many heads cut off in ’93. The fact had been 
made familiar to her in various novels and dinmas. She knew there 
had been a disturbance called a Coup d’Etat, and some unpleasant- 
ness, when she was in the nursery ; but here her knowledge ceased. 

They went into a long narrow street, somewhere at the back of 
the Luxembourg — a street of malodorous gutters, and shabby mis- 
cellaneous houses, with hardly a window or a roof alike, the anti- 
23odes'of the white unifoimity, the classic monotone of that Hauss- 
mann-ized Paris which she knew so well, a street of wine-shops and 
gargottes and humble cremeries. It was in this evil-smelling region 
that the teinturier had his abode. 

Keratry stopped at a narrow dirty-looking door, and led the way 
into a dark passage, with an atmosphere j^ervaded by the concen- 
trated essence of stale cabbage, the reek of an everlasting pot-au-feu, 
a soup-kettle that was always brewing, and which w^ent down froin 
father to son without solution of continuity, like a West Indian 
])epper-i)ot tliat has been in the family for generations. 


260 


AN 18IIMAEL1TE. 


“ What a horrid den ! ” cried Amelie, smothering her nostrils in a 
perfumed handkerchief. 

The stairs were worse than the passage, and seemed endless. 

Jean Nimporte lived on the floor just under the steep gable roof ; 
but to Am61ie it appeared as if that fifth floor were the twentieth, 
and that they were ascending the tower of Babel ; all the more so 
because every voice she heard on her way, through doors ajar, or 
bawling from the obscurity of the staircase, seemed to speak a dif- 
ferent patois, or a different language. 

“ What is this awful place ? ” she asked at last, breathless, pant- 
ing, on the fifth story, where the lauding, with its smoke blackened 
ceiling and one small window, was wapped in perpetual gloom. 

“ Un garni,” answered her guide, coolly. “I dare say it is a 
revelation to you. You would hardly conceive, out of your inner 
consciousness, what a cheaj3 Parisian lodging-house could be like.” 

“ I could never imagine anything so dreadful,” said Amelie, with 
conviction. 

‘ ‘ Ah, you would have to descend a good many lower circles be- 
fore you reached the bottom of the pit. This is a bourgeois cara-' 
vansera — the abode of the straggling, the decayed, the respectable. 
Wait till you see real squalor, real dirt, real misery. Here the 
graces of life may be wanting, but the decencies are still cared for 
— in some wise.” 

“Not in the matter of odors,” protested Amelie, still protecting 
her nose ; “ the smell of this staircase is positively sickening.” 

“ Ah, the atmosphere is always the fii’st thing to suffer.” ^ 

“And you really come here— often — to see this person ?” said 
Amalie, wonderingly, as they waited at Jean Nimporte’s door. 

“ As often as I want him. He has the pride of Lucifer, and won’t 
come to me.” 

A voice called “Come in,” and Keratry turned the handle of the 
door and entered, Amelie lingering in the background, half afraid 
to follow. 

“ Good morning, friend ; I have brought a little cousin to see you 
— I suppose you have no objection ?” Keratry began, cheerily. 

“ If the lady does not object to the hole i live in, I do not object 
to the lady,” answered the literary hack. 

His voice was husky, like the voice of a man whose lungs were 
injured by drink and tobacco ; but his tone was the tone of a gentle- 
man, and he rose, meerschaum in hand, to greet his visitors. He 
was haggard and thin, with lank fair hair streaked with gray, 
tangled beard, pale, cadaverous complexion, eyes round which care 
had dug deep hollows, and painted purple slmdows. He had once 
been handsome, or at least refined and interesting. His bony figure 
stooped a little, and was clad in a loose dressing-gown, which had 
once been fine, but which long service had reduced to the color of a 
withered chestnut leaf that has lain for a week in the gutter. His 
hands were the best point about him ; but their transparent pallor 
savored too much of disease and death. Amglie, who had no ac- 
quaintances less prosperous than herself, shrunk with a thrill of 
terror from this human shipwreck. 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


261 


“I have brought you my last scenes,” said Keratry. “ You need 
not mind -what you say before mademoiselle. She knows I am in- 
debted to yodr collaboration, though I don’t tell the world so.” 

•‘Why should you?” retorted the man who called himself Jean 
Nimporte. “If your play could win Petrarch’s laurel crown, I 
should not ask for a leaf from the garland. All I want is to live. 
I have not had an idea of my own here for the last seven years,” 
touching his pallid brow with pallid lingers ; “ but I can straighten 
another man’s weak sentences, and set them on their legs. I can 
jn-une exuberances, and pluck up weeds in the garden of fancy. 
And although I have forgotten how to smile, I know' how to turn a 
sj^eech that will set a theatre in a roar. Will you have a glass of 
puree de pois ? ” 

He pointed to a bottle half full of a greenish liquor, and on Ker- 
atrv refusing, poured some of the stuff into a tumbler, which he filled 
with water. 

‘ ' Isn’t it rather early for absinthe ? ” asked his client. 

“ It is not too early to live, and I can’t live without it,” answered 
Jean Nimporte. 

He unrolled the manuscrijff, and with bent brow, and pen ready 
dippedAn the ink, began to read. His decision and rapidity of mind 
were marvellous, though the hand that held the pen trembled like 
an aspen leaf. He erased, interlined, threw in a sentence here, a 
word there, slashed his ruthless across a wliole page of dialogue, 
dotted in jokes as eavsily as another man might have put in commas. 
Amdlie looked on open-moutlied, half indignant that her friend’s 
work should be so roughly handled, yet imx3ressed by this wild 
genius with 'the shaking hand and matted beard. 

For nearly an hour M. Nimx^orte w'orked at those concluding 
scenes of the new vaudeville ; never relaxing the intent froAvn ux^on 
his haggard brow ; six^ping his glass of absinthe ; refilling his x^ipe 
with those shaky hands of his ; yet working all the w'hile. Now and 
again he made a radical alteration ; put a husband into a cux^board 
to overhear a lover’s declaration ; brought a soubrette from behind a 
curtain at a crisis ; played pitch and toss with a love-letter ; manixDU- 
lated the old, old machinery of the Palais Royal drama with all the 
dexterity of an adept. 

“ I really think the thing will do,” he said, as he ax^x^i’oached the 
end. “ I am obliged to hurry along ; for I have an ax^i^ointment at 
two o’clock with a gentleman to whose Frederick I have the honor 
to play Voltaire.” 

“A poet whose rhymes you retouch,” said Keratry. 

“Retouch, yes — and occasionally remake altogether, for love of 
the Muses. He pays me more than you do ; and he had need, for 
the work is harder. I was a poet myself once, and the divine flame 
burned fiercely enough in those days ; but it is dreary work now 
to get a spark out of the old embers — to order. I never could work 
to order. Monsieur de Keratry. I should be a rich man if my 
Pegasus would have run in harness.” 

He blew a great cloud from his old brCde-gueule— and sat for a 
minute or so motionless, his hand lying idle on the manuscrix^t, his 


2G2 


AN ISIIMA ELITE. 


eyes fixed and dreamy. So does the man look wlio sits amidst the 
wreckage of a life that might have been glorious, and glances back- 
ward along the path of folly ; flower-strewn in some places, perhaps 
— but, ah ! how much oftener thick-set with brier and nettle. 

“You expect a visitor at two o’clock,” said Amalie, looking 
alarmed. “ Why did you not say so before? Pray let us go this 
instant,” she added, turning to Keratry, and standing up, parasol 
in hand. “We may meet some one in that horrid staircase; some 
one whom we know.” 

“ Don’t be frightened, child. Nobody in the Quartier Latin is 
likely to know you,” replied Armand, easily. 

“.And if an acquaintance did recognize you, mademoiselle, what 
then?” asked Jean Nimporte, looking up at her with a mocking 
smile. “Is it a crime to visit the literary hermit in his cell — with 
your cousin ? ” 

“ Pray come ! ” pleaded Amelie, whose audacity had evaporated 
during the enforced quietude of the last hour. 

It had been dull work, sitting playing with the handle of her 
parasol, listlessly contemi3lative of the poet’s shabby surroundings. 
The red tile floor ; the wretched old sofa' meant for repose, but 
loaded with pamphlets, papers, books, clothes — the accumulated 
litter of months of slovenly existence ; the window opening upon a 
vista of roofs and chimneys, with not a leaf or a flower within 
sight ; the distenij^ered wall, blotched with damp, scrawled here and 
there with charcoal sketches in the style of Gavariu ; the cobwebs in 
the corners of the ceiling— altogether a dismal scene for the contem- 
plation of a young lady accustomed to gilded cornices and damask- 
draped windows, commanding a bright outlook of foliage and 
fountains. The excitement, the flavor of novelty in her escapade, 
had all passed off, like the bubbles upon the champagne at the 
Pantagruel, and she had leisure to rej)ent of her folly, and to specu- 
late as to what would hapi)en to her if Madame Jarze, by any un- 
lucky accident, found out this freak of unchaperoned girlhood. It 
was not that there was any harm in the thing, but it was unusual, 
unallowed — an assertion of feminine liberty which might be toler- 
ated in New York, but which would create a nine days’ wonder in 
the Champs Elysees. 

But the teinturier’s pen was at work again, correcting the final 
couplets of the vaudeville, and Armand de Keratry was for the 
moment absorbed in watching that rapid pen as it played havoc with 
his verses. 

She tapi^ed his shoulder impatiently with her parasol. “ Pray 
take me home,” she said ; “ don’t you hear that monsieur expects a 
visitor? I would not be seen here by anybody for worlds ! ” 

Too late. There was a tap at the door, left ajar on account of the 
sultry midday heat, and a languid voice complained : 

“Your staircase is the most infected hole in all Paris, my friend. 
It surprises me that you escape a fever,” 

“ Ciel ! ” gasped Amelie, in a half whisper, recognizing that fash- 
ionable drawl, the concentrated essence of superciliousness ; “ it is 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 263 

Monsieur de Pontoiiartraiii. He must not see me. He will tell 
papa— mamma— Hortense. Hide me, hide me, for pity’s sake ! ” 

She looked about her wildly, like a young hind at bay, for one of 
those curtains, cupboards, inner ai3artmeiits of any kind, which are 
so plentiful in all vaudevilles. 

There w^as a recess in which the literary hack kept his wardrobe, 
a threadbare coat and an old, old paletot, with ragged silk lining — a 
remnant of the time when there were gandins upon the earth, and 
when he was one of them ; but no shred of drapery screened that 
recess. But in a corner of the room there was a ladder which com- 
municated with a loft above; and to this ladder Jean Nimporte 
pointed, grinning maliciously the while. 

Amelie flew to the haven of refuge, and scrambled up the ladder, 
rdmost as quickly as a gnome in a fairy drama at the Chatelet or the 
Porte St. Martin. She knew not whither that old break-neck ladder 
would lead her; but she would have gone anywhere — on the oj^en 
roof, among chimney-pots and half-starved cats, at peril of life and 
limb, to avoid Paul de Pontchartrain. 

Armand followed her up the rickety ladder, and as they vanished 
from view Jean Nimporte crossed the room with a leisurely step, 
sayings 

“A moment, my friend, and I am with you,” in a voice half 
drowned in a yawn, as of a man just awakened. 

“Were you asleep?” asked Paul, sharply, as he entered. “Ah, 
I see, more absinthe, and at two o’clock in the day ! Do you know 
that you are softening your brain a little more with every spoonful 
of that pernicious stuff ? ” 

“ What does it matter? When the work of ruin is accomplished 
I shall have ceased to suffer. Why should a man try to preserve 
his thinking faculty when thought is all pain ; when memory is only 
a camera that shows the photograph of a fatal past ; when imagina- 
tion cannot conjure up a gleam of light in the future ? ” 

“ Tliat’s not a bad idea — a man steeping himself in absinthe, with 
the deliberate intention of blotting out his brain,” said the little 
poet, excitedly. “You area terrible refractaire, Valnois, but you 
really have first-rate ideas. Have you thrown off any suggestions 
for me lately ? ” 

He drew his chair to the table, took off his gloves, and squared 
his elbows with a business-like air, little knowing that a pair of mis- 
chievous blue eyes were watching him from a hole in the ceiling, in 
the shadow of the projecting chimney-brace. 

“ Yes ; I have scribbled a few verses betwixt midnight and morn- 
ing — bosh, no doubt, but they may do for replied the refrac- 

taire with a scornful accent. 

“ Good ! Let us go over them together presently. And have you 
touched up those verses I brought you the other day ? They were a 
little in the rough, j)erhaps, but full of strong ideas. ” 

“No. I tried hard; but those attempts of yours are really too 
bad. The versification is simply imiDo.ssible ; and for ideas — well, I 
found two. One verbatim from Heine ; the other, a thinly disguised 
theft from Baudelaire. I am very sorry, my dear vicomte, but your 


264 


AN ISRMAELITE. 


own stuff really won’t do. The Parisian public and the Parisian 
jjress will stand a great deal from a man of fashion, with a sprig of 
nobility in his cap — but they won’t stand such twaddle as yours. ” 

“ You have at least the merit of candor,” said the vicomte, deeply 
offended. ‘ ‘ If you had written the verses yourself you woiild think 
better of them.” 

“Perhaps. There never was a mongrel so ugly that the mother 
did not love him.” 

“I wrung those lines out of my heaid.” 

“ Then do not wring your heart any more. The game is not worth 
the candle. Let us be business-like, lucomte. I tried to chop your 
lines into shape, to introduce an idea or two into that wilderness of 
words, but it was not to be done. If you want poetry you must be 
content to get it ready-made, as you did your idyl of the carrion by 
the river, which you tell me is your chief success. Here are ballads 
and songs for you, plein le dos, amorous, blasphemous, despairing, 
communistic ; not an idea worth speaking of in the whole batch, 
but enough of the swing and the melody of verse to make them pass 
current — as the work of a Pontchartrain.” 

‘ ‘ I would rather we worked together on metal from my own 
mine,” said Paul, with dignity. 

‘ ‘ My dear friend, your mine produces nothing but scoria. ' IHell 
you, I have spent dismal hours trying to lick this wretched twaddle 
of yours into shape. I will look at it no more. If you want to fill 
your new volume ” 

“ Charniers et Sepulcres,” said the vicomte ; “ my publisher wants 
the completion of my manuscrij)fc before the end of next week. The 
season for poetry is nearly over.” 

“ If you must publish you had better give him these things of 
mine. You can read them before you make up your mind. They 
are the very lees in my cup of inspiration ; yet they are not so bad 
but that I have read worse in the magazines.” 

He opened a ragged, rusty old blotting-book, once a costly thing 
in Eussia leather, with gilded crest and monogram on the cover, and 
from a confusion of papers he picked out nine or ten loose sheets, 
which he handed across the table to M. de Pontchartrain, who read 
them veiy slowly, commenting and questioning as he went along, 
with the captious air of a man detennined to find fault. Sometimes 
he demanded an explanation of sentences which he found obscure, 
sometimes he stopped to check off the feet of a line on his fingers. 

“You have a trochee here where it ought to be an iambus,” ho 
said. “Mon Dieu, c’est terrible ! It flays one’s ears.” 

“ My ear had an old knack of being true in the old days,” said 
the hack quietly. ‘ ‘ I would venture the price of the ballad that you 
are mistaken ; ” and thereupon he demonstrated that the vicomte 
was altogether wrong. 

The loft to which Amelie and her companion had fled was a place 
of dust and cobwebs, invalided furniture, mouldy straw, empty 
boxes, rusty birdcages, the jetsam and flotsam of a cheap lodging- 
house, and among all this rubbish three or four large cases of 
shabbily-bound books— pamphlets, magazines, plays, novels. It 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


265 


was the interior of a steep gable, and was not above four feet high 
in the clear. Those two listeners had to squat in a crouching posi- 
tion on each side of the trap-door, a heavy beam close above their 
heads. Amelie knew that she was spoiling her pretty holland gown, 
perhaps massacring the beiTies in her dainty little hat, and assuredly 
making a wreck of gloves at nine francs a pair, and yet it was all 
she could do to keep herself from exploding into loud laughter. To 
hear the little fopling, the pretended genius, the sham Musset, the 
sj)urious Baudelaire, in whom her sister Hortense believed as in 
Divinity itself — to hear him buying his verses, bargaining and 
chaffering, as he did jjresently, for ballads and odes, serenades and 
fantaisies, piece by piece ; grudgingly agreeing to pay so many 
francs for this or that, cheapening the waters of Castaiy, making 
light of the Muses : — to hear all this was as good as the funniest 
play or the wildest opera bouffe in Paris, as the Belle Helene, or the 
Grande Duchesse herself, with all the chic and audacity of Schneider 
at the ^ex of her fame — Schneider, aflame with diamonds, perform- 
ing before emperors and kings. 

AmMie remembered the vicomte’s noble wrath that afternoon at 
Lady Constance Danetree’s, when she spoke of the literary teinturie)\ 
She remembered his vehement “ Cela ne se pent pas ” — the indig- 
nant stride of his little, varnished boots up and down the room. 
“ Cela ne se pent pas,” he had repeated, swelling with heroic scorn. 
And behold those very poems which had made him the lion of small 
tea-parties, the pet of elderly young ladies, had been bought and paid 
for from this poor meurt-de-faim with the threadbare coat and 
ragged beard. 

Armand and AmMie sat smiling at each other among the dust and 
the cobwebs, the moths and the mice of that dreadful old loft ; afraid 
to stir, lest they should crack their skulls against the thick old tie- 
beam ; smiling across the gulf of the trap-door, through which came, 
the thin voice of the vicomte, acrid as cheap red wine, bargaining* 
and disputing over Apollo’s waies. 

When the liaggling was all over, and the vicomte had doled out 
his cash, and departed, grumbling, with his verses in his pocket, 
those two listeners in the loft burst into a peal of laughter, long and 
loud, and a bitter laugh from the garreteer below came up through 
the trap and mingled with their mirth. 

“Don’t let us lose another moment,” said Amelie, as she came 
nimbly down the ladder. “But, oh, what fun it has been ! I would 
not have missed it for worlds ! ” 

“ Lucky that I am in the habit of using that loft as a library, 
or there Vould have been no ladder handy,” said M. Nimporte. 

“ Yes, it is a curious aspect of literature, is it not, when a man buys 
his verses as he would buy his boots ? But the vicomte makes a 
harder bargain with me than he would with his bootmaker.” 

“Ah, but he pays you ready money,” said Keratry, laughing. 
“That makes all the difference.” 

“ I shall dine to-night,” replied Jean Nimporte, rattling his cash 
in his pocket. “Good-day, mademoiselle. I am glad our trans- 
actions have amused you.” 


266 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


“ I only wish yon had a better market for your verses, monsieur,” 
answered Amelie, with a gracious courtesy. ‘ ‘ You seem to be clev- 
er enough to set up half a dozen fashionable poets.” 

“I have learned my trade, mademoiselle, that is all.” 

He went out to the landing with his guests, and bade them adieu 
with the grace of a Lauzun or a Richelieu. 

“ He is perfectly distingue, although his clothes and his room are 
more terrible than a nightmare,” said Amelie, as she triirped quick- 
ly down the greasy old staircase. “ And now, for pity’s sake, get 
me a carriage of some kind, as fast as you can, and tell the man to 
drive me to Lady Constance Danetree’s, so that mamma and Hor- 
tense may find me there when they call at five o’clock. I shall tell 
Lady Constance my morning’s adventures, and all about Monsieur 
Pontchartrain. How amused she will be. Poor Hortense, with her 
poet pour rire ! If I were to tell her this secret now she could let 
Pontchartrain know that she had found him out, and he would 
make her an offer of marriage within the next twenty-four hours, 
out of sheer fright.” 

“ It would only be sisterly to try the experiment,” said KertJtry, 
as they walked toward St. Sulpice, looking for a voiture de place. 

“I’ll think about it,” replied Amelie. “Hortense is a very un- 
deser\dng object ; but she certainly is my sister ; and I suppose that 
constitutes a claim upon one’s good nature.” 


CHAPTER XXXIII. 

“and the day shall be daek over them.” 

Jean Nimporte, otherwise Hector de Valnois, sunk back in his 
tattered old easy-chair, directly his visitors were gone, and refilled 
his little black pipe, which, next to the yellow-green liquid in his 
glass, was the consolation of his days. Between absinthe and to- 
bacco he contrived to endure life, and to forget that he had been 
once a creature of lofty aspirings, that he had once dreamed of fame 
and the Academy. He lay back in his chair, gazing at the motes 
dancing in the sunshine, and smiled his cynical smile at the little 
scene which had just ended. Presently he took the vicomte’s 
money out of his pockets, and counted it in the hollow of his wasted 
hand. A few' napoleons, and a handful of francs — a shabby honora- 
rium even for the lees of genius. But the verses which w'ere good 
enough for M. de Pontchartrain to publish. under his own name and 
at his own risk, would not have found a purchaser among the pub- 
lishers of Palis, who had long ago closed their pockets against Hec- 
tor’s muse. 

“ My dear fellow, you had better go dowui to posteritv as the 
author of ‘ Mes Nuits Blanches,’ said Michel Levy, of the Librairie 
Nouvelle, the chief rendezvous of intellectual Paris. “You will 
never again write anything as good.” 

Poetry, therefore, had long ceased to count as a means of bread- 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


267 


winning ; but there were long weary hours, in the dreary dead of the 
night, when Valnois found a transient relief in verse — when the un- 
successful man’s rebellious auger against fate, the disappointed man’s 
remorse for his own follies, the lonely man’s sense of lovelessness 
and abandonment, found their expression in wild revilLngs of Provi- 
dence, or in the opium-eater’s visions of an impossible Paradise ; 
and these effusions, the safety-valve which kept the engine from ex- 
plosion, were just good enough to sell to Paul de Pontchartrain, and 
fifty times better than the most laborious efforts of that aristocratic 
driveller. 

“ I shall dine to-night,” said Valnois, looking at his money ; “ and 
I shall pay my last trimestre for this accursed den, so that I may be 
safe from being thrust out into th^ street for the next month or two. 
If Paquerette were here I would give her a new gown. Poor 
Paquerette! Was I very brutal that day, when my brain was mad- 
dened with absinthe and my temples were throbbing with neuralgia ? 
A man is not particularly choice in his language at such a time. I 
may have driven her away from me by cruel words ; or she may have 
made uj) her mind to leave this life of semi-starvation in an attic. 
She may have flown to a warmer nest. Who knows ? It is the com- 
mon lot of alliances like ours to end so. 

He smoked and mused, and sipped his absinthe. He had replen- 
ished his glass often during the two interviews with absinthe, but 
not with water ; so that the stuff he was drinking now was almost 
absinthe pure. It was much too early for him to show himself in 
the streets, even in this free-and-easy students’ quarter, where a good 
coat was not de rigueur. The summer sun was still in its glory, a 
sun in which his once black coat looked a grayish-green, and his 
haggard face more ghastly than that frayed and threadbare coat. 
No ; he would wait till the friendly dusk, and then stroll to the 
Restaurant Laperouse, on the Quai des Grands-Augustins, where ho 
could dine sumptuously, at moderate cost, in a room facing the river. 

He was tired after his two interviews, and fell asleep in his chair 
presently ; a sleep which lasted long, lulled by the distant sounds 
of the city, undisturbed even by the bells of St. Sulpice ringing for 
vespers. His nigh'ts were wakeful and fevered ; and it was only 
after mental exhaustion that he slept soundly. 

It was growing dusk, when there came a tap at the door, which 
startled him into broad wakefulness. Before he could answer the 
summons the handle was turned, and a man entered. 

There was enough of the yellow western light still shining through 
the open window to show the man’s face as he stood within the door- 
way. It was the drink-soddened countenance of that man who 
stopped Ishmael in the street the night he left the meeting of the 
Cercle du Prolo, the man who called himself Dumont. Valnois 
started to his feet. 

“ You ! ” he exclaimed “Why, it is an age since you have been 
here ; and I began to think you were dead.” 

“Did you? ’’ replied the other, coolly. “ What use would there 
have been in my coming here ? I had nothing to tell you. I was 
poorer than you.” 


268 


AN ISiniAKLlTE. 


“You seem to have mended your fortunes,” said Valuois, survey- 
ing his \dsitor from head to foot. “I never remember seeing you in 
such a sound coat, or in boots so instinct with the primal grace of 
the bootmaker. May I ask what gold-mine you have discovered in 
the gutters of Paris ? ” 

“ I have found the best substitute for a gold-mine, in the shape 
of a wealthy patron.” 

“ Indeed ! ” retorted the other, contemptuously ; “ and what man- 
ner of man, and for what kind of motive, can be found to patronize 
Theodore de Valnois, alias Dumont ? ” 

“ I think there is only one true definition for the word patron — a 
rich man who wants to make use of a poor man,” answered Dumont ; 
“ and just such a patron have I found in the person of an old friend 
of yours.” 

“ Friend ! I have no friend.” 

“ Not now, I grant. But you had a friend once ; a friend whose 
life you saved on the fatal fourth of December, and who ought to 
have been grateful to you. Yet I suppose it will be said you can- 
celled the obligation afterward.” 

“ No fooling, cousin. You take yourself for a wit, and that is 
about the only original opinion I ever discovered in you. Y’ou have 
been sponging upon Paquerette’s husband. Is that what you 
mean ? ” 

“I have been making myself useful to him. That is what I 
mean.” 

“You have found Paquerette?” exclaimed Hector, eagerly. 

“No ; I am looking for her, or for evidence of her death. That 
is my present profession, for which I draw a modest little income by 
way of expenses ; and I am divided in my mind as to whether I 
shall keep her alive, and content myself with the occasional egg my 
golden goose lays for me, or whether I shall kill her and my golden 
goose at the same time for the sake of ready money.” 

“You are talking enigmas.” 

“ Not very obscure ones, dear cousin. Ishmael wants to be sure 
that his wife is dead — no doubt with a view to taking a second wife. 
If I can show him the acte de deces, he will give me a small snm of 
money — small, very small — but a godsend for a man in my position. 
Now what is to prevent my producing the acte de deces ? ” 

“ Nothing, except the fact that Paquerelte is still living — at least I 
hope so ; and that forgery and falsification of official documents 
mean felony, and that felony — above all a second felony — means a 
longer seclusion from society than I think you would care to enter 
upon at your time of life.” 

“ That is a stumbling-block, I grant ; but one that ought not to 
prove insurmountable to a man who has lived his life— sixty-six 
years, my Hector, and nearly half a centuiy of failure and danger, 
shifts and difficulties, disappointments and disguises. If such a 
career as that cannot make a man dexterous, what can ? There have 
been false actes de deces before to-day ; and there will be again, 
until the art of forgery is exploded.” 

“ Difficult and dangerous,” said Yalnois. 


AN ISmiAELITE. 


260 


‘ ‘ Difficulty and danger are the atmosphere I have breathed ever 
since I was twenty ! ” 

“You must take your own way in life, though it has not led you 
into pleasant places hitherto. I have nothing to do with your 
schemes ; I am not a forger ; and I am not going to extort money 
from P^querette’s husband.” 

The man who called himself Dumont came over to the open win- 
dow and lounged with his elbows on the window-sill, looking across 
the dim perspective of gables and chimney-pots to the gilded dome 
of the Invalides, shining in the last rays of sunset. 

“ Poor little Paquerette ! ” he said gently, “Paquerette with her 
lily face and her pathetic eyes. I always liked her. There was 
always a^soft spot in this tough old heart of mine for Paquerette. I 
was sorry for her, too, for her fate was sad, and you were not alto- 
gether kind to her.” 

Hector staided from the half-recumbent position which he had re- 
sumed a minute or so before, and put down his pipe suddenly with a 
hand made tremulous by anger. “ How dare you say that? ” he ex- 
claimed. “ I loved her, and was true to her. Our path was not 
strewn with roses. If there were thorns we trod upon them side by 
side. Why do you harp upon Paquerette’s name ? You must have 
seen her lately ; you must have discovered something.” 

“ I have not seen her since I saw her in this room more than three 
months ago,” answered the elder man ; and then he turned from the 
window and faced Hector with a grave countenance. “ But I have 
discovered something.” 

“What?” 

‘ ‘ I have found out who Paquerette is ! ” 

“Who she is, poor child!” echoed Hector, sadly: “not much 
mystery there, I should think. The child of poverty, the child of 
neglect, the drudge of a drunken grandfather and grandmother. 
Wiiat can there be to discover in such a lot ? ” 

“ Poor as she was she had a father,” said Dumont. 

“ And it is about that father you have made your discovery ? ” 

“Yes.” 

“ An interesting one? an aristocratic mystery, eh?” asked Hector, ' 
with his cynical air, refilling his pipe. 

He thought his kinsman was trifling with him. 

“ Interesting to me,” answered the other gravely. “Paquerette 
is mv daughter.” 

‘ ‘ Your daughter! You never told me that you had one,” said Hector. 

“There are numerous episodes in my life which I have not told 
you. Perhaps this is the one of which I have least reason to be 
ashamed ; and yet I am not free from blame even here. Paquerette 
is my daughter^ the daughter of my youth, the child of my one true 
and pure love, the child of my wife.” 

“ Y^our wife ! Another revelation ! ” 

“You have heard how I came to Paris to study law; rich in 
academical honors, poor in Your father, my father s first 

cousin, looked down upon our branch of the house. Your father 
was a landed gentleman, in a small way ; mine, a doctor in a little 


270 


AN ISmiABLITE, 


country town. Yon have heard no doubt how I neglected my legal 
studies, was plucked in my examinations, went to the bad alto- 
gether, from the provincial and Philistine point of view. But you 
may not have heard that I was a great man in a certain set, and 
those the advanced Reds, socialists of the most scarlet dye. I be- 
came a voice and a power among those men — lived anyhow, gam- 
bled a good deal, and was just lucky enough to keep my head above 
water. I drained the student’s cup of pleasure to the dregs. There 
is not a cabaret or cafS-concert in this quarter of the town in which 
I have not wasted my nights ; not a billiard-room that these feet of 
mine have not trodden. I had my flirtations, too, ifi those days with 
many a handsome grisette ; but I never knew what love meant till a 
fair pale face flashed past me in the twilight, and I turned to follow 
a graceful figure in a shabby gi’ay gown. Ah, how shabby she was, 
how poor she looked, dear child ; and yet such a gracious creature ! ” 

“ Was this Pilquerette’s mother?” 

“Yes; a girl working at a clear-starcher’s not very far from this 
street ; a modest, honest, shy young creature, who blushed ^nd 
trembled at my voice. It was weeks before I could win her confi- 
dence. If — if I ever had the thought of betraying her — and God 
knows what infamy may have lurked in my mind at the first — her 
innocence, her girlish simplicity, her perfect faith disarmed me. We 
had not known each other many weeks before I was her slave. And 
was I, a socialist, reddest among the Reds — I who believed in the 
perfect equality of men, who scouted the bondage of cast — was I to 
shrink from allying myself with a pure and lovely girl because her 
parents were working people ? What had I to lose by a low mar- 
riage? What hope or prospect had I of a loftier alliance ? I — the 
penniless scapegrace ! What chance had I of marrying rank or 
money? I counted the cost, and found I should sacrifice nothing 
by marrying the girl I loved ; and I marned her one fine morning 
at the Mairie, after having romanced to her a little over-much, per- 
haps, iDoor child ! about my father’s noble blood and his chateau — a 
stuccoed box on the dusty outskirts of our town.” 

“ You married her ! That was an honest act, at Ljast.” 

“Yes; I had flashes of honest feeling in those days; I married 
my love one fine May morning ; but I had no home except a garret 
to which I could take her, and I let her go on working at the laun- 
dry and living in her parent’s wretched hole, while I beat about for 
a way of supporting her and myself, somehow or somewhere. Our 
stolen hours of liappiness, our dances at the Pre Catalan, our little 
jaunts to the fairs about Paris, our rides in jolting old cuckoos, were 
the sweetest liours of my youth. One wrong, and one only, I did 
my love in that beginning of our life. I made her swear to keep her 
maiTuige secret. I would not have P&re and Mere Lemoine for 
father and mother-in-law. I meant to leave Paris, as soon as I could 
scrape a little money together, and to settle at Lyons, or some other 
large town, for a few years, only returning to the capital when I 
could feel sure of having given the Lemoines the slip. If you knew 
tlie kind of gentry they were you would not wonder at this prejudice 
on my part, ultra Republican as I was.” 


AN TSIIMAELITE, 


271 


“ Puqiierette has told me that they were dreadful people.” 

“We had been married less than three months when my Jeanne- 
ton began to be unhappy at her laundry. She had been seen with 
me at the Pre Catalan, she had been seen with me at a fair at Saint- 
Cloud, se^n walking with me in the streets of an evening — and 
scandal, the broad gross scandal of the vulgar, began to asperse her 
fair name. Hints and insinuations, were flung at her — sneers and 
vulgar taunts which to her were torture. So one day, after a 
night’s run of luck at a gambling-house in the Palais-Eoyal, I told 
Iku' to be ready to leave Paris with me next morning at daybreak. 
We travelled southward through the bright days of autumn. Oh, 
happy days ! oh, happy journey ! last glimpse of paradise that I 
ever saw on this earth ! After that my career was all downhill. I 
was unlucliy, idle, reckless ; I had not the blessed faculty of con- 
tinuous work. I could talk, I could write flashy articles for the Re- 
luiblican newspapers. I jucked ui3 a few louis honestly now and 
then. But I lacked the blessed gift of jiatience. I was a born 
gamester. When I had a chance, I trifled with it. And finally, 
within a year of my daughter’s birth, my reckless folly landed me — 
where you know.” 

“ In the galleys. A bad hotel for a gentleman of good family.” 

“ Jeanneton struggled on while I was in that hell upon earth — 
worked for lierself and her infant — starved sometimes, came to see 
me in my misery as often as the rigor of that devilish place allowed. 
This lasted for nearly a year ; and then, for the first time, my poor 
love was missing when the appointed day and hour came round. 
Slie had come to me, ill or well, in fair or foul weather ; and my 
heart turned cold when the allotted hour came and passed without 
sign or token from her. . Hell seemed blacker on that wretched day 
than it had ever seemed since I entered it.” 

“ Slie was dead, perhaps?” 

“ Dead, no ; not yet. It was a ghastly story. It would take too 
long to tell you the\letails. Enough that I came by the knowledge 
of the facts by the aid of a priest, whose presence was the only 
gleam of light in that Inferno — even to me, the mocker at creeds 
and creed-makers. I came in time to know that my poor girl had 
fled in a panic from the wretched den in which she had lived for 
some months— had fled on foot from Toulon — because the scoundrel 
who owned the house had pursued her with infamous proposals, 
and when she shrunk from him with indignant loathing, had con- 
spired with some of the vilest inmates of his house to bring a charge 
of theft against her. The plot was shallow enough, her innocence 
obvious ; but in her helplessne.ss and inexperience— weak, ill, penni- 
less, friendless, my poor girl took fright. She saw herself in danger 
of being shut up in that place which she knew too well from^iy 
abhorrent description, from the glimpses she had had of my" sur- 
roundings. She fled from Toulon with her child, on foot, ]4anic- 
stricken at that false charge. This much, and no more, could I dis- 
cover six vears afterward, when I was a free man ; free as a man 
can be with the bi-and upon his shoulder, the taint of prison-life in- 
fecting him, his yellow passport the herald of his disgrace in every 


272 


AJS miMAELITE. 


town he entets. I was free ; Init I was a inined man, and I was a 
heart-broken man into the bargain. The scoundrel who had con- 
spired against Jeanneton had died an evil death ; so I had not even 
the comfort of revenge. I left Toulon, hardened as only seven years 
of the chain can harden a man ; hardened still more by the loss of 
that one creature I had honestly and fondly loved. I was never 
able to trace my poor Jeanneton’s footsteps to her nameless grave. 
Perhaps I might have tried harder ; but those from whom I heard 
her story told me that the stamp of death was on her when she left 
Toulon. She had not a week’s life in her, they said.” 

“ And your child ? You took no pains to learn her fate ? ” asked 
Hector. 

“ Why should I seek her, poor waif ? Had I a home to give her, 
or even an honest name ? If she had drifted to some abode of 
charity so much the better ; if she had gravitated toward the gutter 
I had no power to rescue her. The infant had never fastened her- 
self upon my heart as her mother had done. The 'woman I loved 
being gone, I was content the child should go with her. If I had 
found her, and could have sheltered her, she would have been not 
the less a grief and a pain to me, recalling what I had lost. When 
I left Toulon I had done with human affection. I set my face 
toward Paris ; went back into the jungle of the great city, to live 
U23on my fellow-men — a beast of prey, among other beasts of prey.” 

“ You are a strange being, my cousin.” 

“ I am what life lias made me. Perhai:)s if I had been born with 
a big rent-roll I should have been the soul of honor.” 

“ And you say Paquerette is your daughter ? Are you sure of her 
identity, sure that there is no missing link in the chain ? ” 

“ I am sure. The first time I ever saw that girl’s face, the night 
I met her with you on the stejis of Tortoni’s, it was as if I had seen 
a ghost. It was Jeanneton’s face that flitted by me in the lamplight ; 
a face from Hades. Later, as she altered with the fatigues and 
cares of her theatrical career, it was still Jeamieton’s face ; Jeanne- 
ton’s face as I saw it last in the bagne. I had no suspicion of the 
truth. I thought of the likeness only as one of those accidental re- 
semblances which are common enough in life. Had you, either of 
you, mentioned the Eue Sombreuil, or the name of Lemoine — had 
you told me that Pdquerette was a fatherless waif, reared in that 
l^lace, I should have been certain of the truth. But, it was left for 
Piiquerette’s husband to enlighten me as to her parentage.” 

“ And since you have known the tie that unites her to you, you 
have hunted for her ? ” 

“ Everywhere. I told Ishmael that I had not been able to trace 
her beyond Valparaiso, and that I must go to ValjDaraiso to find the 
tri^k. Need I say that I did not go so far as South America in 
search of the poor girl whom I last saw in this room ? I drew a nice 
little lump of money for my passage to and fro, and contrived to lie 
perdu in Paris, while I cautiously iDrosecuted my quest for my miss- 
ing daughter. I have not yet returned froin Valparaiso, and I 
doubt if I shall return until I am furnished with the acte de deces 
from the authorities of that jjort.” 


AN ISIDIAELITE. 


2TS 


“Scamp and trickster to the last ! ” 

“Can the leopard change his spots, or the Ethiopian his skin? or 
could you show me any way to earn my bread honestly, if I wanted 
to begin life afresh ? No, my cousin ; there is deep significance in 
that old fable of Hercules and the two roads. A man makes his 
choice, once in his life, by which road he will travel ; and, by 
heaven, when once he has taken the wrong turning, there is no 
cross-cut that will get him back to the right road. I took the wrong 
turning nine-and-thirty years ago, when I squandered the little 
hoard my father had scraped together to pay for my legal education ; 
and from that hour to this every stej) I have travelled has been ujjon 
the downward road. ” 

“ Do you think that Paquerette is still living?” inquired Hector, 
gloomily. “ She had wretched health last winter. I have had many 
a miserable hour in the watches of the night, picturing her alone, 
friendless, penniless, dying of some lingering malady.” 

“ Who knows ? Paris is like a great forest. She might be living 
in the next street, and one would know nothing. I have juit half a 
dozen advertisements, cautiously worded, in the likeliest newsi:)aper ; 
but she may not have seen them. I have employed a man who 
keeps a private inquiry office, and who has a knack of hunting down 
I^eople Avhere everybody else Avould fail. But as yet he has not 
found her, or any trace of her. Meanwhile it seems a pity that I 
should not touch a lump of money for the acte de deces. She would 
be no worse off for being dead and buried — on imper ; and it will be 
easy to resuscitate her later, and to explain that the document was 
a mistake.” 

“ Cheat Ishmael as much as you like, my cousin, on your own 
accouTTt ; but bring none of your unholy gains this way. The coin 
Avould smell of brimstone,” answered Hector Avith a Aveary air. 

That name of Ishmael ahvays gave him a thrill of pain. It re- 
minded him of the past, Avhen he had been the benefactor and Ish- 
mael the obliged ; Avhen he had been the superior ; when hope still 
smiled upon his path ; Avhen life was still glad. And now Ishmael’s 
name was a word of power in Paris ; Ishmael had won the wealth 
Aviiich sAveetens existence, which makes a man ruler among his fel- 
low-men. 

And he, Ishmael’s superior by education and opportunity, by the 
divine spark of poetic genius, where was he in the meridian of life ? 
A star that burned out ; a mine that had given up all its precious 
metal— a mere husk of manhood, looking Avith tired eyes along a 
dismal road Avhose end is death and oblivion. 


CHAPTER XXXIV. 

f 

“the kingdoms of nations gathered together.” 

The world AA’as four AV’eeks older since that memorable sixth of 
June Avhen BerezoAA^ski tried to cut short a life Avhich was destined 
to end in after years by the handiAtork of a bolder assassin. Bere- 

1 Q 


274 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


zowski, valiantly defended by Emmanuel Arago, had been con- 
demned to imprisonment for life, and the Czar had gone back to 
St. Petersburg somewhat otiended that a French jury had spared the 
life of his would-be assassin. The gloiw of the great show in the 
Chamx)s de Mars was waning a little, at least to the jaded eye of 
the Parisian, who saw the great glittering temple every day if he 
l^leased. There had been a j^lethora of kings and princes, sultans 
and 2)otentates from far corners of the earth, and the distinctly local 
mind of the Parisian was in a state of historical and geographical 
bewilderment. On the outward crust of things, that gathering of 
the nations was the crowning glory of the imperial rule, the triumph 
of the peaceful arts — not forgetting a good deal of sj)ace in the show 
devoted to the exhibition of the latest developments, improve- 
ments, and inventions in the art of slaughter. It was a reign of 
peace— i^eace without honor, as some fractious and bellicose si:)irits 
protested. France had preserved her neutrality, and had lost her 
prestige. On one side she beheld a united Italy — unfriendly, un- 
grateful, suspicious ; on the other, a mighty Germanic confedera- 
tion which threatened her frontiers. The daring state- craft of Bis- 
marck, strong in the triumph of Sadowa, had transformed the modest 
kingdom of Prussia into a many-headed monster, swollen with the 
overweening pride of victorious arms. 

Seen by the stranger, imperial France, as represented by this city 
of wide boulevards and many cafes, new theatres, and new bridges, 
market-x)laces such as no other city in Eurojje could show — judged 
by the splendor of brick and stone, glass and iron, the second em- 
X:)ire might bo taken to be at the ajiex of its glory ; but the diplo- 
matists and the statesmen who came to see the show could look 
deex^er into things than this outer husk of pseudo-classic boulevards 
and much exx^enditure in the building line. They knew that the 
gloiy of the empire had grown old like a garment, and her sun had 
gone down while it was yet day. The tragical end of that fond 
dream of an imx^erial Mexico, the failure of the negotiations about 
Luxembourg, the unfriendly attitude of Italy, the double-dealing of 
Prussia — all these were thorns in the x^illow of him whose sombre 
face, aged by chronic malady, assumed the monarch’s kindly smile 
as he returned the greeting of subject or of stranger. Ah, what a 
strange and fatal history was suggested by that bent head, that medi- 
tative and anxious brow, those features darkened by secret thought ! 
A childhood saddened by exile ; a youth of ambitious dreams and 
vague aspirations amid the mists of Lake Constance ; anon the en- 
thusiast’s wild efforts to rekindle the star of a banished dynasty ; 
then ignominious failure and the weary education of captivity and 
exile. All the dazzle and sx^lendor of a reign of unexamx^led x>i’os- 
X^erity had failed to obliterate those shadows of early care ; and now 
the noontide of success had waned, and the shades were deexiening 
as the pilgrim descended the hill. To the indifierent eye he was 
but little changed since the emxnre was young — a trifle more bent, 
])erhax')S a shade graver and grayer than in that brilliant noon of 
success and poxnilarity ; and that was all. But those who were 
about his person noted how from this time he sunk into a deeper 


ISHMAELITE. 


275 


taeihirnitv than that of old, and isolated himself oftener amid the 
clouds of his cigarettes. He read little : he wrote no more. The 
imperial dreamer w'as wrapped in his dream, and the dream was 
slowly darkening to the blackness of night. 

It was the second of July, day distingnished above other days by 
the distribution of prizes at the Palace of Industry — a ceremonial to 
be presided over by the emperor, who himself received a first prize 
for his workmen’s dwellings. Never was this empire of yesterday 
more brilliantly supported by the princes and potentates of ancient 
days. England v:as here in the person of her debonnaire young 
prince, heir to that crown which had once claimed this wide France 
as an ai^panage. Yonder, in shining robes of purest white, came the 
Sultan, unconscious of that dark line of murder in his house of life ; 
the Prince of Orange, the Duke of Cambridge, the Duke of Teck, the 
Crown Prince of Prassia, Humbert of Italy, Mohammed-Effendi, 
Abdul-Hamid, princes, princesses, and princelings seemingly num- 
berless as the starry host ; and among them all the Empress Eugenie, 
fairest star in that splendid galaxy. A wonderful cortege, a proces- 
sion of stars and garters, knighthoods of every order, saintly badges, 
eagles and crowns — a dazzling train, moving slowly, with stately 
footsteps, to the music of a triumphal hymn composed by Rossini 
in honor of this great occasion. 

The emperor’s speech was full of that all-round congi*atulation 
and pious exultation which are the dominant notes in such speeches. 
He felicitated himself and Paris upon having received all the x)rinces 
and potentates of the civilized world, and the masses of the nations 
in their train. He bade liis subjects take pride to themselves in 
having shown the peoples of the earth France in the zenith of her 
greatness, her prosperity, her freedom. Foreign nations must needs 
appreciate this great country, once so troubled, to-day laborious, 
calm, fertile in noble ideas, rich in genius, unspoiled by material 
prosperity. Despite the increase of wealth, despite the natural bent 
of civilized man to pleasure and luxury, the national fibre was ever 
ready to vibrate, the national heart to beat high to the call of honor. 
But "that warlike impulse of noble souls need be no longer a cause 
of peril for the rej^ose of the world. France was no longer the dis- 
turber of the nations. 

The initiated were not deceived by imperial rhetoric. They knew 
that the moment which the emperor had chosen for the glorification 
of France and her institutions was the very moment when those in- 
stitutions were on the verge of shipwreck. The hearts of her men 
and women were rotten at the core : debased by a life of dissi])ation 
and effeminate luxury ; a society made up of clinquant and pacotille ; 
a nation living beyond its means, and inciting other nations to a like 
foolishness ; a society in which home-life was almost extinct, and 
religion no more than a fashionable formula, patronized by the 
wives and daughters, ignored by husbands and fathers. 

While the music of tliat triumphal liymn was reverberating along 
the roof of the Palace of Industry, whicli for to-day was softened 
by a 'svhite velarium, simngled witli golden stars ; while the drums 
were beating, and tlie pompous proces.sion was moving with slow 


276 


AN miMAELITE. 


and stately tread under the sunlight, was there no vision before the 
emperor’s eyes — nearer, more vivid than the flags and the eagles, the 
dazzle of splendid uniforms, the brilliant coloring of the patrician 
crowd, the trophies, and palm trees, and flowers — was there no 
nearer vision of a brother emperor, scion of an imperial house, a 
young man now lying in his bloody grave, the victim of an ambi- 
tious dreamer’s fatal error ? The news of Maximilian’s death was 
fresh in the emperor’s mind on that July afternoon. He had re- 
ceived the despatch that told him his protege’s doom in that very 
luiilding, just before he made his speech. Yes, it was there before 
him, the bloody vision of his ghastliest failure — the foredoomed 
Mexican expedition. The young emperor, with his handful of 
troops, helpless in beleaguered and famished Queretaro ; the at- 
tempted flight in the dim dawn of a summer morning ; and then, 
flight proving hopeless, the white flag, and the juteous appeal to 
Escobedo : ‘ ‘ Let me go under escort to any port you please from 
whence I may embark for Europe : I swear to you on my honor never 
again to set foot in Mexico.” 

Never again ! Alas, j^oor scion of the Hapsburgs, not so easily 
does the fatal trap into which thy foolish footsteps have been lured 
unlock its iron jaw’S. There have been evil deeds done in thy name 
in this land of extinct volcanoes. These men are bloodthirsty in 
their triumph, and no plea from Republican America yonder, no 
prayers of thine owm friends, nor the heroic advocacy of thy counsel, 
can save thee. Bravely dost thou go to thy untimely death in the 
pale June morning, while that far-off Paris, which sent thee to thy 
doom, is all a-flutter with the flags of her festival. 

Bazaine was at Nancy, keejung quiet. At his landing at Havre 
ho had been received without honor — indeed, with all the signs 
and tokens of disgrace. But already the imperial displeasure was 
lessened. There had been no court-martial, no impeachment, no 
day of reckoning. That w^as to come later, for master and servant. 

Lady Constance Danetree was among the fashionable crowd at 
this imperial function. However little one may care for such spec- 
tacles one must assist at them, or society will ask ‘ ‘ wdiy not ? ” and 
it is sometimes more trouble to ex^^lain an omission, than to make 
the sacrifice of inclination which society requires. Lady Constance 
had been going every wdiere of late. She had her box for the Tues- 
days at the Fran^ais, she W'as seen at the opera, at the little thea- 
tres, at every race-meeting near Paris. She seemed to have a thirst 
for amusement, to be hurrying hither aird thither in quest cf excite- 
ment. 

“Ithouglit you cared very little about these things,” her friend 
Lady Valentine said to her one night at a great festival at the opera. 
“You used to laugh at my love of pleasure, and to wonder that T, 
wdio am nearly tw'enty years your senior, could live so much in 
society. I told you that as you grew’ older you would W’ant more 
amusement. But that time has not come yet.” 

“ One must go W’ith the herd,” answ’ered Constance listlessly. 

“But you never used to go with the herd,” remonstrated Lady 
Valentine; “that was your great charm. You W'ere not afraid to 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


277 


think for yourself. I am sure that this feverish life does not suit 
you. You are looking pale and worn, haggard almost. You will 
lose your beauty if you are not careful.” 

“ I am not going to be careful for the sake of that unknown quan- 
tity which you are pleased to call my beauty,” answered Constance, 
laughing. “ One must enjoy one’s life.” 

“ Ah, but you don’t look as if you were enjoying life. You don’t 
look happy.” — ^ 

Lady Valentine took upon herself all the privileges of an old 
friend, and was eminently troublesome. Other people were not so 
familiar with Constance Danetree’s character, and to that outer cir- 
cle she seemed a radiant creature, full of enjoyment in a veiy enjoy- 
able world, gifted with all the charms and blessings that can make her 
life worth living. She went everywhere, was seen eveiy where, in 
that merry month of June — theatres, operas, balls, races, concerts, 
dinners, afternoon gatherings of all kinds. Wherever the elite of 
Paris wore to be found, Constance Danetree was sure to be among 
them. But go where she would, she never met the great contractor, 
the man of bridges and markets and viaducts and railways. Not 
once since that afternoon of June the sixth had she looked upon the 
face of Ishmael. Nor did she hear his name often in society ; for 
although he was reverenced for his success, and the wealth that had 
followed success, he was not a man of the world in society’s accepta- 
tion of the word. He did not sjiend his money as a man should 
who wishes to stand well with society. He lived in an old-world 
corner of Paris, and entertained only his few and particular friends. 
He bought neither pictures nor statues ; he collected neither rare 
plate nor old books. His figure was unknown in the Hotel Drouot. 
He was nobody’s patron in the world of art. He had no chateau in 
the country, no shooting parties or wild-bore hunts. He kept no 
stud, had won no distinction upon the turf, which was just then 
the ultra-fashionable amusement alike for aristocrat and plutocrat. 
By those who knew very little about him he was set down as a churl 
and a miser — a man who chose to live apart and gloat over his 
money-bags, rather than to float gayly along that brisk current of 
l)leasure and dissipation which was so merrily drifting young France 
one knew not whither. 

Those who knew him well, knew that he was one of the foremost 
philanthropists of Fi-ance, that his purse had helped and his brain 
had guided some of the noblest schemes for the welfare of men, 
women, and children which the modern science of charity had de- 
vised. His purse did not open at eveiy call. He was not a prey to 
the charlatan brood who make benevolence a trade, the letter-writers 
and red-tapists, the theorists and fussy philanthropists. He had 
founded a benevolent institution of considerable imiiortance, which 
he maintained at his own cost, governing and administering it in 
person, upon his own system. This was a refuge and school for 
indigent boys and girls, very much upon the plan of the admirable 
institutions founded later by M. Bonjean,' noble son of a heroic 
father, and by the good Abb6 Koussel, for boys only, The home 
was ill the country, in a village beyond Marly, and hither he sent 


278 


A]^ ISIIMAELITE, 


tho friendless little waifs whom his agents gathered np, like fallen 
leaves, out of Parisian gutters, to be purified and re-created amid 
green fields and flowers, woods and running streams. There were 
no happier hours of the millionaire’s life than those which he spent 
among these rescued voyous, watching them at work in the quaint 
old gardens, or at their studies in the grave old house, which had 
been a monasteiw before the revolution of ninety -three, and which, 
being left r^iote from railroads and in a state of decay, had been 
bought for about a fourth of its value. 

At the children’s home Ishmael was known as M. Chose, and it 
was only his most intimate friends who knew him as . the author of 
this good work. His interest in, and his labors for, this large insti- 
tution occupied all his intervals of leisure in this summer of sixty- 
seven ; and he had refused all invitations, save for those public ban- 
quets at which his presence was a professional necessity. He had 
only been two or three times at the Exhibition, and on each occasion 
he had gone only to do the honors of the show to some distinguished 
foreigner in his own line of life — a Nasmyth, a Peto, or a Ounard. 

Thus the month had passed, and he and Constance Danetree had 
never met. She had gone everywhere, trying to forget him, despis- 
ing herself because of that weakness of her woman’s heart which 
made forgetfulness impossible. She had tried to drown thought 
and memory in the wine of pleasure ; but the wine tasted of dust 
and ashes, and memoiy remained unaltered. 

The evening of July the second was to be distinguished by a 
grand ball at a noble old house in the Faubourg Saint Germain. It 
w’as a ball that had been talked of incessantly in Lady Constance 
Danetree’s circle for the last three weeks. The giver of the enter- 
tainment was the Baroness Clavaroche, a lady wdiose husband had 
been, until a year ago, a stanch Legitimist, but who, soon after the 
death of his mother— an ancient dame distinguished for the severity 
of her morals, the dignity of her manners, and the rancor of her 
hatred for the race of Bonaparte — had astonished all Parisian society 
by suddenly turning his coat, and accepting an important office at 
the imperial court. Like all converts, the baron was intense in his 
enthusiasm for his new creed, swore by the emperor in this twilight 
of his glory as if it had been still broad noon, was a passionate ad- 
vocate of the imperial policy, in the chamber and out of it — out- 
Rouher-ing Rouher himself, the “second emperor,” in the boldness 
of his partisanship. 

The Baroness Clavaroche, who was about fifteen years her hus- 
band’s junior, and who loved* gayety and expenditure, considered it 
her bounden duty to give a festivity of some kind in honor of the 
imperial idea. She had sent out cards for a ball, which, according 
to the tongues of rumor, was to surpass in splendor all private en- 
tertainments of this splendid year. Eveiwbody who was noble, or 
rich, or famous, or beautiful, had been invited to the festival, and 
not to have been a;^ked meant social ostracism. Mine. Clavaroche 
and Lady Constance met in the fashionable crowd at the Palace of 
Industry on the morning of the second, the baroness radiunt with 
delight at the success of her ball, which was already an assured fact ; 


AN TSHMAELITE. 


279 


for in society success begins with the voice of rumor and the excite- 
ment of anticipation. A ball not talked about immensely before- 
hand would be a ju-edoomed failure. 

'‘Everybody is coming,” exclaimed Mme. Clavaroche ; “every- 
body. I could count the few refusals on my fingers ; and those are 
all from people who are too ill to move.” 

“Have you asked Monsieur Ishmael, who came after the em- 
jieror, and took first~^3rize for workmen’s houses,” inquired Con- 
stance carelessly, “ among your numerous notorieties? ” 

“ Aes, I asked Monsieur Ishmael. He is a great favorite of mine 
— so earnest, so original, such a contrast to our petits creves. I did 
not forget him. But I am sorry to say he is one of my few refusals.” 

“ What ! Is he too ill to move ? ” 

“ No, but he tells me he is not going out anywhere this season. 
He has some great work in hand — a railway in the south somewhere, 
between Nimes and the Pyrenees, a stupendous affair, all viaduct 
and tunnel. He is too busy to go to balls. But we shall have 
I)lenty of notabilities for you— the Siamese princes, the Cham of 
Tartary, the brother of the Tycoon. I am told the iDrother of the 
Tycoon is a most fascinating person — not handsome, you know', ac- 
cording to our European idea, but a most interesting type. Be sui’e 
you come early.” 

“If I do, I shall not stay late,” answered Constance. “I find 
that I am growing old, and soon grow tired of lights and music.” 

“ That is all nonsense. You must come early and stay late. I 
W’ant beauty to be a conspicuous element in my rooms. What is the 
use of providing a background of flowers and fountains, and electric 
light, if the Ihung foreground is to be made up of ugliness? Tell 
me about your costume. WTio made it? ” 

“You had better ask wdio is making it. Perhaj^s it is not yet 
begun. You know what these people are. I went to the new man 
who made the gow'ns for the last comedy at the Gymnaso.” 

“You w’ere very wuse. The new man has a taste, an instinct 
altogether hors ligne. Spricht is trading on a past reputation ; he 
has emptied his bag. That pink satin and silver gown Pierson wore 
in the second act of ‘ Contagion ’ was a marvel. And it was such a 
brilliant idea to return to tlie sheen and sliimmer of satin, after the 
dreary reign of lustreless silk. 1 am going to woar satin to-night,” 
added the baroness, with an air. 

She was a stout woman, fair, and with frizzy hair, always over- 
dressed ; for despite the universal prejudice in favor of Parisian 
taste, there are w omen in Paris wdio sin upon the side of super- 
abundant finery. 

“ If you want to know wdiat you ought not to wear,” said Mi’. 
Spricht, the great couturier, to one of his favorite client's, privileged 
to’ enjoy the dear man’s confidence, “you have only to look at the 
Baroness Clavaroche.” 

“ But surely you make all her gowns?” exclaimed the customer. 

“ I have heard her say so.” 

“ I make her gowns, madame, but I did not make her figure. You 
W’ould not expect me to waste refined art ui^on a W’oman who has no 


280 


AN ISmiAELITE. 


more shape than a pincushion. Madame Clavaroche comes here, 
and I sell her my most expensive stulfs, and my people make them 
into gowns, and load them with the costliest garniture ; and the re- 
sult is the Baroness Clavaroche, as you see her. I have nothing to 
do with it. I would not soil my fingers by touching a yard of lace 
in such a cause. I do not lead a forlorn hope. ” 

“ Then, unless one has a decent figure and a little natural grace, 
there is no use in coming to you,” murmured the customer, meekly, 
full of reverence for the great man. 

“ It would be wiser in such a case to keep your money in your 
pocket. It was the Marquise de Bar-le-Duc who persuaded me to 
undertake Madame Clavaroche, and to oblige that sweet marquise, 
who was at that time du dernier bien with an exalted personage who 
shall be nameless, I would do a great deal. If the baroness had 
been amenable to reason and good advice, I might have taken some 
interest in her, in spite of her figure. I might even have succeeded 
in making her look well. But the baroness thinks herself a fine 
woman, and has ideas of her own : two insuperable difficulties. I 
allow her to w^ear what she likes ; she pays me forty thousand 
francs a year ; and, as I said before, the result is — the Baroness 
Clavaroche.” 

In spite of this startling condemnation from the highest authority, 
the Baroness Clavaroche was the fashion, and helped to lead the 
fashions in that brilliant Paris of 18G7. In those days beauty and 
grace were not essential elements in a w’oman of fashion — a grain of 
it and a bushel of audacity were rather the indispensable qualifica- 
tions for that distinguished role. Was it not said by one of the 
most accomplished courtiers of that epoch, concerning quite the 
most charming woman of the imperial entourage, that she was two- 
thirds lorette and one- third great lady? If this could be said of the 
great leader of the beau-monde, be sure all the little leaders fol- 
lowed in the same track. 

The mansion of the Clavaroche family was one of the oldest 
houses in the Faubourg St. Germain. It was situated in one of the 
(piiet old streets of the faubourg, behind those magnificent modern 
buildings on the quays, the official residences of ministers and em- 
bassadors, the villas of Jewish millionaires and new nobility. There 
was a suggestion of the past in every gable and chimney in the ex- 
terior view, in every cornice and doorway within. For more than a 
century and a half the good old house had remained unaltered from 
its original splendor of the Louis Quatorze period. It had begun 
to be old-fashioned in the days of the Eegency, and w'as positively 
rococo under Louis Quinze. 

Luring the first Empire, and throughout the reign of Louis-Plii- 
lippe, the Clavaroches dwelt apart. They led a life of absolute se- 
clusion in the midst of the great busy city, received only a few’ <*ld 
friends of the most strictly Legitimist opinions, gave themselves up 
to devotion w'hich touched the boundary line of bigotry, were alto- 
gether pious, dull, and narrow-minded, refusing to believe in the 
virtues of the good citizen king, or to gladden his court by the light 
of their countenances. They grew old and gray in the old gray 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


281 


house, amidst mouldering draperies, and faded tapestries, and tar- 
nished gilding ; relics of the past, which to the Olavaroclie mind 
were in themselves a patent of aristocracy ; curtains which had 
screened their great-great-grandmothers, armchairs in which princes 
and cardinals of the great king’s coui-t had sat ; looking-glasses 
which had reflected the vanished beauty of La Valli^re and Monte- 
span. 

Baron Clavaroche lived up to the mature age of forty under the 
maternal wing, sharing all the opinions and cherishing all the preju- 
dices of ma mere, whose hand he kissed in his stately fashion when- 
ever he gave her his morning greeting ; but shortly after his fortieth 
birtliday, and about three years ago, the baron, during a visit to the 
little town of Vichy with his invalid parent, had the happy fortune 
to win the good graces of a wealthy financier’s daughter, a young 
lady of the new school, and an ardent Bonapartist. The marriage 
renewed the fortunes of the house of Clavaroche, which had sul)- 
sided to a dead level of mediocrity ; but it broke the old baroness’s 
heart. After enjoying the privilege of domineering over her son’s 
habits, opinions, and speech for the last forty years, it seemed a hard 
thing to have the sceptre of maternal authority, the dignity of her 
position as mistress of that grave old house in the faubourg, the 
administration of her son’s slender fortune, which she had nursed 
and managed with a discretion worthy of an old financier — to have 
all the power and glory of her life snatched from her grasp by a 
plump and somewhat vulgar young woman of five-and-twenty, who 
had Ijeen brought up on American principles by a doting and indul- 
gent father, who had been allowed to spend money like water, and 
who had been flattered by the young fortune-hunters of the period 
until she fancied herself irresistible. 

Perhaps the chief reason of Mademoiselle Bourley’s ai^preciation 
of the baron’s merits was the fact that he, among all her acquaint- 
ance, had treated her as a common mortal, and had never stooj)ed to 
flatter her. The good old name of Clavaroche, the odor of sanctity 
w’hich hung round these families of the old rock — these things were 
also an attraction ; and Elise BoUrley had only been acquainted 
with Theodore Clavaroche three weeks when she signified to her 
adoring father that she had at last seen a man whom she could con- 
descend to marry. 

“ The others about whom you teased me -were all detestable,” she 
said ; “ but the Baron Clavaroche is at least a gentleman. And if he 
is stupid, that will be so much the better for me, as I intend to be 
mistress in my own house.”- 

The matter was easily arranged, the bride being one of the richest 
heiresses in Paris, and the bridegroom having long looked toward 
marj'iage as a break in the monotony of his life. A week after the 
beginning of the Paris winter season, Baron Clavaroche and Made- 
moiselle Bourley were married at the Madeleine. The service was 
l)erformed at midnight, a magnificent function, at which all fashion- 
able Paris assisted. 

The Dowager Baroness was an old woman when this blow fell 
upon her, and her health had been failing for some’ time ; but she 


282 


AW ISUMAELITE. 


had stood up like a tower against the encroachments of age ; slio 
had held her own in her narrow circle against all coiners ; her voice 
was as loud, her frown as awful, her hatred of existing institutions 
as rancorous, her abuse of those in power — notably of the good and 
fair empress— as vehement as it had been in the early days of the 
Citizen King ; but after her son’s man-iage she gave way all at once, 
the tower was sapped at its base, the walls began to crumble, the 
hour of ruin and downfall was near at hand. On the eve of her 
son’s w-edding she made him swear that he would be true to the 
elder branch of the house of Bourbon as long as she lived. 

“When I am in my grave you can do what you like,” she said. 
“ I shall not be there to know of your treason, and in purgatory 1 
shall have enough to do to bear the burden of my own sins, without 
feeling the weight of yours.” 

The new baroness chafed against the old order of things from 
the very beginning of her wedded life. She longed to sweep away 
the old furniture, the faded tapestries, the tarnished gilding. It was 
in vain that her husband urged that the things she despised were 
precious as objects of art. She replied that the empress could 
tolerate nothing that was not strictly in the style of Marie Antoi- 
nette ; and that these ornate and ponderous old cabinets and sofas 
and gigantic armchairs of the seventeenth century were detestable, 
these sienna marble slabs and brazen arabesques the very lowest 
forjn of art. 

“ Do no disturb the old house while my mother inhabits it,” he 
pleaded. “ She will not trouble us long.” 

£lise grumbled a little. There was no knowing how long an old 
woman might spin out the thread of life ; and while the dowager 
dawdled and lingered over those closing scenes youth was liurrying 
past for the young baroness, pleasures hastening by her untasted, 
while she languished in that dusty old house, and was allowed to 
receive no one except a few Legitimists who were a quarter of a 
century behind the times, and still regretted Charles the Tenth. 
She was panting to call in the great upholsterers of the day, to send 
all those ponderous grandeurs of'the past to the auction room, to bo 
sold en bloc with all their associations included — ay, even the chair 
in which Turgot had sat, the table upon which the Due de Kichelieu 
had played lansquenet with cardinals and princes of the blood 
royal. She was pining to redecorate and refurnish the historic 
mansion, to awaken the sleejung echoes with the sound of fiddles 
and cornets, to set the light aiiy feet of the Empire dancing in those 
stately halls that had seen the revels of an older dynasty. She was 
languishing to let the gay and garish light of the" present in upon 
the dim shadows of the past, to disperse the ghosts, and bring the 
living, breathing, moving Vanity Fair of new Paris about and around 
her. 

“You might as well have taken me to live in a tomb,” she ex- 
claimed pettishly to her husband, whose aristocratic face and 
dignified bearing might adorn but certainly did not enliven her 
existence. “ Indeed it is much gayer in the funeral chapel of the 
great emperor; yonder ’’—with a Jerk of her head toward the Inva- 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


283 


lides — “for there people are always coming and going. Here there 
is no one. At dusk, after the house is shut up for the night, I can 
hear the silence in the hall and on the slaiicase.” 

Baron Clavaroche admitted that the house was rather triste ; it 
was a quality of tine old houses to be triste ; and it was a rare privi- 
lege to enjoy, in the heart of Paris, the seclusion of a chateau in Nor- 
mandy. 

“I hate chateaux in Normandy, or anywhere else,” exclaimed 
£lise ; and I would rather have an apartment in the Champs Ely- 
sees, or in the Faubourg Saint Honore, than this house of yours, 
which has missed its voca^on, since it ought certainly to be a con- 
vent for Carmelite sisters who wear nothing but woollen, and are 
rung up at three o’clock in the morning to say their prayers.” 

“ There can be nothing changed so long as my mother lives,” the 
baron answered, guavely. 

He had given a promise, and he meant to keep it, at whatever in- 
convenience to himself. The rich young wife chafed her pluftiage 
against the prison bars, complained that there was no use in buying 
tine gowns when there was no one to see her wear them, but wore 
the gowns all the same, and was as tine as a parrot in a cage. 

But the day came when the gay colors had to be put away for a 
while, and when the young baroness had to attire herself in that 
severe and dense black raiment which makes French mourning such 
a terrible ordeal to the vain and the frivolous. The last sands had 
run out in the glass, and the stately funeral car with its violet 
canopy, its plumes and silver scutcheons, had come to carry the old 
baroness to her last resting-jrlace in the vault below a particularly 
hideous Egyptian tomb in gray granite, on the ridge of the hill, 
among the limes and chestnuts of Pere Lachaise ; and the young 
baroness reigned in her stead. 

The young baroness had to endure a long and weary ^’■ear of 
mourning, on which Baron Clavaroche insisted as a sacred debt, due 
to the manes of the departed dowager, not one hour of which was 
to be remitted ; and then the old house in the old faubouj g awak- 
ened to life and bustle, and movement and expenditure ; in a day, in 
an hour, in. the opening of a door and the entrance of a crowd of 
workmen. The baroness had planned everything with architect and 
upholsterers befoi’ehand, and the process of transformation from the 
old to the new began with the stroke of the clock that told the last 
liour of that year of mourning. The baron gave in his allegiance to 
the emperor, a friend in high quaiders having brought about tlie' 
rapprochement of these two great men ; and as soon as her house 
was ready the baroness opened her doors wide to that strange mixed 
world of the second empire, a world in which many were beautilnl, 
brilliant, distinguished, brave, clever, while some were even honest 
and loyal ; but in which there were more scamps, roues, tricksters, 
and charlatans than had ever been seen in the front rank of society 
since .the days of Philip the Regent, who is said to iiave invented 
that word roue for the benefit of his own particular friends. “They 
were mostly creatures worthy of being bi-oken on the wheel,” said 
the prince. The friends for their part aflirmed tliat the s.o briquet 


284 


AN ISllMAELITE. 


was an honorable one, implying the last degree of loyalty and devo- 
tion, and only signified that they Avere ready to be so broken in the 
service of their royal master. * 

The baron was not a genius, and he did not carry over to the im- 
perial side of the senate the weight of a great political reputation ; 
but his name was a power in itself, he voted as he was told to vote, 
and he spoke as he was told to speak ; and in those stormy debates 
of sixty-seven — debates upon the Mexican question, debates upon 
the Luxembourg treaty, when the language and the bearing of 
Prench senators surpassed in dramatic vehemence and bluster the 
most vehement and blusterous of demagogues or Home liulers, 
Baron Clavaroche was useful, were it only as a dead weight. 

And now to do honor to the newest development of the emi^ire, 
the Baroness Clavaroche opened her doors to receive all fashionable 
Palis at a fete more splendid than had ever been given by a juivate 
individual within the memory of the oldest inhabitant of that ancient 
faubourg, whose highly respectable inhabitants had a knack of liv- 
ing to a green old age. 

The ball was to be a costume ball, and costume balls were not so 
common in those days as they are now. In those brilliant seasons 
that followed the marriage of the emi^eror — in the day of Crimean 
victories, of Solferino and Magenta — period of triumph, and glory, 
and unclouded sunshine — the balls given by prime ministers and 
imperial favorites had been of an ideal splendor, the costumes and 
groupings, the historical quadrilles, the quadrilles of the nations, of 
the four seasons, the constellations, shepherds and shepherdesses 
after Watteau, the four sons of Aymon — these had been moving pict- 
ures of a brilliancy and a beauty to haunt the memory of man. Ah ! 
Avhat stars of beauty had shone upon those nights of fashion and 
folly. Castiglione, in the audacious triumph of sensuous loveliness, 
in her costume of Queen of Hearts, braving opinion, confronting 
society, secure in the dominion of transcendent charms ; Greville ; 
Walewska ; each supreme after her fashion, and intent on outshin- 
ing the glory of her rivals. The emperor and empress had loved to 
assist in these festivities. They had entered and vanished mysteri- 
ously, as in a kind of fairyland, by secret doors communicating with 
the Tuileries. They had changed their costumes three or four times 
during the long night of revelry ; but the emperor’s slow and side- 
long walk, or his habit of pulling the drooping ends of his mustache, 
was apt to betray him in spite of disguises. Grave senators, famous 
laAvyers, had not disdained to take part in these assemblies dis- 
creetly attired in short Venetian mantles of velvet or satin, which 
scarcely concealed the regulation evening dress beneath. 

^ The fever for this spectacular form of entertainment had waned, 
like all other society fevers, after a time, and there had not been any 
remarkable ball of this kind for the last two or three years. Tim 
Baroness Clavaroche took upon herself to revive the taste. Her ball 
was to be a fancy ball, a masked ball, a ball of dominoes, and strange 
disguises, and mystifications. Masks were not to be removed till 
supper, a tremendous banquet which was to be given in a temporary 
pavilion at the end of the garden, large enough to seat live hundred 


AN ISnMAELITE. 


2S5 


people, lighted by electricity, and said to cost twenty thousand 
francs — an erection whicli was to be carted away during to-morrow’s 
daylight, and was to vanish almost as swiftly as a scene in a fairy 
spectacle at the Porte Saint Martin, leaving only a big hill behind. 
The dancing-room had been Madame Clavaroche’s especial care. 
Her ball was to be a ball of roses as well as of historic and fanciful 
costumes. She had reproduced that exquisite arrangement of the 
salle des glaces at Versailles which had been the admii-ation of 
Parisian society in fifty-five, ^yhen the great ball was given in honor 
of the Queen of England. Garlands of roses were suspended from 
the ceiling, crossing and recrossing each other in fantastic profusion, 
and from the rose garlands seemed to hang the crystal chandeliers. 
Tlie mirrors- were framed in roses, the doorways were festooned with 
roses, the orchestra was divided into four alcoves, or golden cages, 
which filled the corners of the room, and the trellises which half 
concealed the musicians were wreathed with roses. It seemed as if 
all the rose-gardens of the South could hardly have furnished so 
many flowers. 


CHAPTER XXXV. 

“and the FIRST-BOEN of the poor SHAIiL FEED.” 

On that second day of July — while Parisian society and all the 
pleasure-seekers from foreign lands were crowded into the Palace of 
Industry, where twenty thousand i^rivileged spectators were seated 
around tlie imi^erial throne, high on its dais of crimson velvet, pow- 
dered with golden bees, amidst foliage and flowers and gigantic 
trophies of industry and art — Ishmael was enjoying a long quiet 
morning in the gardens of the old monastery beyond Marly-le-roi, 
beautiful exceedingly in the full flush of their midsummer glory, 
thousands of roses abloom in the old-fashioned parterres, magnolia 
trees weighed down by their heavy waxen chalices, breathing per- 
fume, vivid masses of golden broom shining against a backgroumi of 
darkest foliage, long vistas of greenery, at the end of which sparkled 
far-off flashes of blue water. It seemed the home of poet or di’eamer 
rather than of practical engineer, contractor, speculator in waste 
lands, millionaire. 

Yet it is a fact that a man whose daily work is of a dry-as-dust 
order has often a fonder love of the country than your poet and 
dreamer, and Ishmael found in these gardens and gi’oves of the old 
Benedictine monastery relief and refreshment after his Parisian life 
which seemed to renew his youth with every fresh visit. There was 
a deep, sweet pleasure, not untouched by sadness, in watching these 
joyous bands of children — childhood without a care— since these lit- 
tle waifs, gathered from the slums and the gutter while thought and 
memory were still dim, knew not of any world outside these gar- 
dens, or the country walks on which they were taken at rare inter- 
vals for a treat. Of the foul world of Paris, the lanes and hovels 
of Menilmontant and Vilette, of Clichy and Montmartre, from which 


2S6 


AN TSHMAEIJTK. 


tliev had been rescued, they thought, if they ever thought of it at 
all,'^as a bad dream which had troubled their babyhood. This life 
here among leaves and tiowers, and songs of birds, and blue sky, in 
spacious dormitories where the little white beds were purity person- 
ified, in lofty play-rooms where there were all the simple toys and 
games that can develop the grace and strength of healthy childhood, 
and awaken the mental powers with the mystifications and puzzles 
that are the delight of children — this was the reality. That troubled 
and gloomy past, time of dark rooms and loathsome odors, mud, 
squalor, blows, hunger, was the dream. 

It was noon, and Ishmael walked, book in hand, in one of those 
long leafy glades, a grassy walk between old Spanish chestnuts and 
flowering limes, with here and there a spreading oak that was sup- 
posed to have been planted in the time of King Dagobert. The 
l)ook was a grave book, and needed to be read in supreme quiet, and 
at this hour there was not a sound in those groves and garden except 
an occasional bird-call, and the hum of summer insects. Truly a 
quiet family these seven hundred and fifty children of the great con- 
tractor. But when in his pacing up and down Ishmael came to the 
ui)per end of the alley, which was only divided by a wide sweep of 
sunlit greensward from the great gray Gothic pile yonder with its 
widely opened windows, there fell upon his ear a sound as of the 
rolling of far distant waves, or the hum of Brobdignagian beetles — 
something vague, tremendous, almost awful, like the sound of na- 
tions furiously raging together, heard from afar. 

This distant tumult was made by the voices of the children at 
their dinner hour, accompanied by the rattle of busy knives and 
forks, the clatter of plates and dishes in rapid circulation. In almost 
all other schools and institutions in France the children dined in a 
solemn silence, and were made to understand that it was an offence 
to break the dumbness. Ishmael’s children were allowed to talk as 
they liked, and they eat all their meals in a Babel of young voices ; 
for Ishmael had been told that it was good for children to talk and 
laugh as they sat at table, and as his chief desire was not for order 
and quietude, but for the health and growth of his little ones, he al- 
lowed full freedom of speech. The children were not allowed to talk 
with full mouths : that offence against decency was put down with 
a high hand by the grave-robed sisters who walked briskly up and 
down, serving and watching, behind the long rows of diners. The 
children were so happy and so free that they took a pride in obeying 
their teachers, and there was an esprit du corps and a loyalt}^ among 
tliGse rescued ones which might put to shame many a famous public 
school. 

Fresently, instantaneously as it were, and with a great sliiill 
cliorus of shouting, indistinct, joyous as the songs of birds, the chil- 
dren came poui'ing out upon the great green lawn, almost golden 
under the vertical sun — troops of girls in pink and white cotton — 
just such cotton as Paquerette wore that day at Vincennes when she 
and Ishmael met for the first time — a serpentine band of girls, nin- 
niiig, flying almost, making swiftest and most wonderful curves over 
the velvet turf — dark hair, fair hair, waving in the summer breeze, 


AJSf ISIIMAELITE. 


2S7 


and a chorus of laughter and Joyous snatches of speech to make glad 
the heart of man — three hundred girls — children let loose suddenly 
into loveliest gardens, after a morning’s easy lessons, and a good 
dinner. Could there be happiness upon this earth more i)erfect? 
Childhood that knows not care ; childhood that never heard of want 
or debt ; childhood wuth an army of i^layfellows amidst a paradise 
of trees and flowers ; and with no stern rules and regulations, and 
dictations and counter-dictations, and theories and counter-theories 
of an incompetent committee to turn the paradise into a prison. 

This was what Ishmael hid done for Paquerette’s sake, for the 
sake of the wife who had abandoned him, blighted his life, and al- 
most broken his heart. He had at first designed a home for boys 
only, having discovered that in France j)ljilanthropy had done much 
more for the succor and protection of the weaker sex than of the 
stronger ; but on becoming owner of the s23acious rambling old 
monastery, with ample space around for adding to its accommoda- 
tion at his pleasure, he determined ujwn creating a home and a 
school for girls, who were to be admitted as infants, and who were 
not to leave till they were old enough and wise enough to enter upon 
the arena of life, fortified by a sound and useful education, and by 
the robust health which is the natural result of a well-fed, well- 
cared-for childhood. It was the recollection of Paquerette’s dismal 
girlhood in that stony well in the Rue Sombreuil which promj^ted 
Ishmael to this extension of his original plan. Are not those pallid 
faces of girls and children in the back slums of a great city an ever- 
lasting a^^peal to the rich ? — just as the hungry faces and gaunt fig- 
ures in the streets at Christmas time seem to reproach the men and 
women in velvet and fur, going home to the roast turkey and plum- 
juidding that have become a burden and a weariness of sj^irit by 
sheer satiety. Ishmael could not forget that ground-floor den in the 
faubourg, on a level with all the squalor and foulness of the yard, 
damp with the slime of ages. And there were many such yards in 
Paris ; and, in a city of late years given over to the madness of 
strong drink, there must needs be many such neglected children as 
Pciquerette. 

It was such children as these that Ishmael and his agents collected, 
and brought home to the paradise at Marly. It was home verily, 
for they had known no other, and they would know no hapiuer on 
this side of heaven. 

The serpentine train of children stopi:)ed its evolutions all in a 
inoment, the j^ink cotton frocks, dark hair and golden hair, tum- 
biiijg over one another in a sudden confusion ; and from those rosy 
lips there came a cry of wilder joy than had been heard before. The 
little girls had descried that tail figure in the leafy alley, the grave 
handsome face, and dark kind eyes watching them. 

It was their patron and friend. Monsieur (3hose. They all came 
tearing across the grass to greet him, a veritable Niagara of children. 
They clapped their hands, they shouted, they stamped their feet, 

‘ ‘ Monsieur Chose ! Monsieur Chose ! Monsieur Chose ! ” they 
cried in shrillest treble — and this was their idea of a polite greeting. 

Rarely was Monsieur Chose seen on this side of the old monastic 


288 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


grounds. He spent many a morning with the boys, teaching them, 
drilling them, giving them easy lessons on mechanics, taking them 
for long pilgrimages to the woods of Marly, where he taught them 
more natural history in an hour than they could learn in a month 
from their books. With the boys he was a familiar friend, but here 
his presence was an event. With the girls he ranked as a demigod. 
They who knew nothing of Greek gods and heroes had a vague and 
dim idea that this man was something above common humanity, and 
that it was no sin to worship him. 

“Well, little ones,” he said kindly, patting a golden head at his 
knee, and smiling across the broad rank of eager faces, most of them 
oj^eii'mouthed and grinning, “you seem jdeased to see me.” 

But they only repeated, ‘ ‘ Monsieur Chose ! Monsieur Chose ! 
Monsieur Chose ! ” stamping their feet for accompaniment. 

It was the rude eloquence of the masses, and Ishmael understood 
its meaning perfectly. 

“ What do you want me to do for you, my children?” he asked, 
seeing himself blockaded by a circle of childish heads, a circle that 
was momently becoming thicker and extending wider, as the three 
hundred assumed this fresh formation. “ Am I to i^lay one of your 
games with you — Colin Maillard, par exemple ? ” 

There was a pause of silence, an evident hesitation, as if one im- 
pulse moved all those young minds, yet none of those young lips 
dared utter it. And then a tiny voice, close to Ishmael’s knee, 
lisped : 

“ Tell us a story. Monsieur Chose.” 

Whereupon followed shrillest of choruses, ‘ ‘ A stoiy, a story, a 
story. Monsieur Chose ! ” Cendrillon, the White Cat, Fortunio, the 
whole round of Perrault and Mine. d’Aulnoy, each child naming her 
favorite legend. 

On certain memorable occasions Ishmael had told these children 
some of the old fairy tales, a treat never to be forgotten. 

He looked at his watch. 

“ Do you know that I want to go back to Paris by an early train ? ” 
he said. 

They did not know, and they did not care a straw. They wor- 
shipped him, but his convenience was of not the slightest conse- 
quence to them. They only repeated, “Please tell us a stoiy, Mon- 
sieur Chose ! ” “ Don’t go back to Paris, Monsieur Chose ! ” “ The 
White Cat, please. Monsieur Chose!” “The Little Bed Hood, 
please. Monsieur Chose 1 ” with infinite variations. 

“ It would be hard to refuse you, my little ones,” he said, and ho 
crossed the lawn, followed and surrounded by the infantine herd, 
till he came to a rustic bench under a fine old cedar. Here he seated 
himself, and the children all sat doT^ui on the grass at his feet. That 
tiny fair-haired child of two and a half — she who had been the first 
to give utterance to the wish of all the others— clambered on to the 
bench and nestled against his arm, with her pale gold curls almost 
in his waistcoat. She had no respect of persons, this baby waif from 
one of the Communistic quarters of Pans. 

Ishmael told them the story of the little girl in the red hood who 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


289 


was on the verge of being eaten by a wolf. He took care to effect 
her rescue at the crisis, lest infantile slumbers should be haunted by 
that direful tragedy. That wolf in the story, told close upon bed- 
time by loving mothers or good-natured nuiees, has been the author 
of many a bad dream under baby brows. Better far the tale of 
Cendrillon, with its happy ending, its poetical justice ; better the 
Sleeping Beauty, the White Cat, anything than those two visions of 
hon or — Bluebeard and Eed-Eiding-Hood. 

The bells ringing for vespers at four o’clock warned Ishmael that 
he had w’asted hours among these babies. Those long legs of his 
would have to stride their fastest to reach the distant station by six. 
He kept no carriage or .saddle-horse at the Home, only a couple of 
springless carts and a pair of sturdy percherons to fetch jDrovisions 
from Versailles or Marly. 

It was seven o’clock when he reached the great city, half-past seven 
wdien he entered the Place Eoyale, whose leafy dulness was in no- 
wise affected by the commotion at the other end of Paris. The sober 
old arcades in front of the houses, unchanged since the days of Louis 
the' Thirteenth, when the rank and fashion of Paris lived here, 
looked as solemn as a cloister in the summer evening. The limes 
and chestnuts cast their dark shadows on the ground, so rarely trod- 
den by hurrying footsteps, paced in leisurely fashion by the grave 
and the contemplative. Here Eichelieu lived, and there Marion de 
Lorme. One of those fine red houses is sacred as having been once 
the home of Victor Hugo. In another lived for awhile that meteoric 
genius Eachel. She sleeps not very far from her old home, in the 
Jewish quarter at P^re Lachaise. 

A man wdio had been pacing from fountain to fountain with a 
weary air for the last half hour, descried Ishmael as he turned the 
corner of the Place, and came out into the road quickly to meet him. 
It was Theodore de Valnois, otherwise Dumont. 

“ I have some news for you,” he said. 

“What! you have returned from Valparaiso then ?— always sui> 
posing you have been there.” 

“Polite ? ” muttered Dumont. “ Did I not write to you from that 
place?” 

“I got sundry letters from you with the Valparaiso irostmark,” 
answered Ishmael, scanning hirn coolly ; “but as you asked for your 
money to be sent to a friend in the Boulevard St. Michel — in order, 
as you said, that it should be forw^arded to you by a securer medium 
than the post— I confess to having had my doubts as to the reality 
of your voyage to Chili.” 

“ Fatal tendency in the mind of the rich man always to think evil 
of his poorer brother,” said Dumont, with a sinister sparkle in his 
almond-shaped eyes, contemplating his employer furtively between 
half-closed lids, an e\dl light lurking in the midst of a network of 
wrinkles, like a spider in the middle of his web. “ Fortunately for 
me. Monsieur Ishmael, my honor and honesty in this little transac- 
tion are not dependent upon my own unsupported testimony. I 
have the evidence of a sailor on board the packet that brought me 
back to France, and that sailor is the man from whom I have ob- 

10 


290 


AN ISIIMAELITE, 


tained the very information in search of which I went to Valpa- 
raiso, and for which you offered me a certain and a veiy moderate 
price.” 

Ishmael paled, and his breath grew shorter, as he looked at the 
man searchingly, suspiciously, in the clear soft light of the summer 
evening, the sun sloping westwai’d above the spires and domes of 
aristocratic Paris. 

“You have heard something— definite — about my wife,” he said, 
his voice husky with emotion, which even his strong will could not 
master. So much— his fate, the history of his life in the days to 
come — depended upon the nature of the news which this man was to 
give him. 

“ Yes.” 

“ Living or dead ? ” 

“ Dead.” 

“ You have brought me back documentary evidence — the acte de 
deces?” 

“ No ; but I have got you living evidence, in the person of a sailor 
who was on board the vessel on which Madame Ishmael died, who 
saw her remains thrown into the sea.” 

“ She died at sea ? ” 

< ‘ ” 

“ Aloiie?” 

“ Alone.” 

“ He had deserted her then, that scoundrel ! ” muttered Ishmael ; 
“the villain who took a base advantage of her childlike nature — 
turned to guilt and sliame a creature that heaven designed for inno- 
cence — a soul without one impure instinct.” 

They were walking slowly side by side under the old arcade, in 
front of Ishmael’s door. There was no one about to mark their 
countenances or to overhear their speech ; nor was there anything in 
the tone or look of either man to startle a passer-by. Life and death 
can be so spoken of, with lowered voices, with gi*ave faces. 

“If you want to know the whole truth about Madame Ishmael’s 
death you had better go with me to this Spanish sailor’s lodging, and 
hear the story from his lips. The man is a rascal, I dai’e say : most 
of these fellows are rascals. They are not reared or educated or 
treated in a way to breed angels. But he can have no motive for 
lying about this matter, no motive for deceiving you.” 

“ How do I know that ? ” 

“ There goes the rich man’s suspicion again. * Has he not you at 
his back ? ’ you say within yourself. ‘ You who are poverty person- 
ified, and therefore a past-master of treachery. You may have 
bribed him, you may have taught him. You, Laurent Dumont, 
whom I employ because it suits my pui’pose, but whom I suspect at 
every turn ! ’ That is the kind of thing lurking in your thoughts, 
no doubt.” 

“Something like that, perhaps. However, I will see this Spanish 
sailor of yours. There can be no harm in that.” 

“ None. And you can judge for yourself, you can make your own 
Qonclusions from what you hear and see.” 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


291 


“ Be sure I shall do that. Am I to understand that you found out 
nothing for yourself at Valparaiso, and that your sole discovery was 
made on the voyage home, from this sailor?” 

“ It almost comes to that. I saw the proprietor of the cafe-con- 
cert, at which your wife sung — a Frenchman, and civil enough. He 
remembered Madame Ishmael perfectly, though not by that name. 
She was Mademoiselle Bonita at his establishment. He praised her 
beauty, her chic, her bird-like voice. He told me that her health 
broke down after three or four months in a tropical climate, and she 
was obliged to leave off singing. She left the city soon after in a 
shij) the name of which he remembered, chiefly because . she was a 
wretched Chilian tub which seldom carried passengers, and because 
he himself had tried to jjrevent Mademoiselle Bonita sailing in her. 
But the poor soul was in a feverish hurry to get back to France. 
She was alone — friendless — 'with very little money, and she caught 
at the first chance of a cheap voyage. She was to i)ay the captain of 
this mercliant vessel al)Out a third of the passenger rate by one of 
the first-class steamers.” 

“ He had abandoned her, then — left her to her fate in a strange 
city. Did your caf6-concert keeper tell you about him ? ” 

“No; he seemed to know very little, and I did not care to ask 
leading questions, for her sake.” 

“ That was discreet. But it shall be my duty to find him, even 
at the eleventh hour. If she is dead, so much the more reason for 
retribution. No, he shall not escape my just wrath, not even at 
the last. Go on with your story.” 

“ The Chilian ship in which your wife sailed was a bark can-ying 
copper, and called the ‘Loro.’ She was bound for Havi’e, and to 
Havre I took my passage by steam, hoping at Havre to be able to 
take up the broken thread. Madame Ishmael was very ill when 
she left Valparaiso : there might be some official connected with 
the harbor at Havre who would remember the landing of a pretty 
young woman — an invalid, and alone, from a ship which carried 
only two or three passengers. But before I was half-way across the 
sea I had discovered all that remained to be told about your wife’s 
fate. Leaning over the taffrail one moonlit night, smoking and 
listening to the talk of a group of sailors clustered round one of 
their mates who had been on the sick-list for some time, I heard the 
mention of a ship called the ‘ Loro.’ This was enough to put me 
on the scent. It w^as the invalid sailor who named that ship. I 
took an early opportunity of questioning him, and from him I 
heard the stoiy of your wife’s last voyage, and her gmve in the sea. 
I need tell you no more. You had better hear the details at firet 
hand, from the sailor himself. He is in Paris, where I brought 
him. He has not many days’ life in him, and if his deposition be 
worth anything, you had better get it without delay. You can 
have it from his owm lips,” 

“ Yes, that will be best. I can see him this evening, you say? ” 

“ At once, if you will come with me.” 

“I must dine fii’st. I will meet you later. Where does the man 
live?” 


292 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


“Not in a very pleasant neigliborliood ; but as yonr business with 
him is a matter of importance you will not mind. that. If I had had 
my own way I should have taken him to the hospital ; but he bad 
an old chum in Paris, aiiJ insisted on going to share his den. He 
lodges in the Cite Jeanne d’Arc, by the Barriere d’ltalie. But you 
might have some difficulty in finding the room if you went there 
without a guide, so if you name your hour I will meet you at le Chat 
Blanc in the Avenue des Gobelins. The Cite Jeanne d’Arc is with- 
in a quarter of an hour’s walk.” 

Islimael looked at his watch. 

“I will be there at half-past eight,” he said. 

“ That gives you only three-quarters of an hour in all,” answ’ered 
Dumont ; “not much time for dinner.” 

“ My dinner will be a speedy business. Au revoir.” 

He "dismissed his agent with a nod, and turned toward his own 
door. But Dumont w^as not inclined to leave him without one more 
question. 

He followed his patron to the doorstep, and laid his hand upon 
Islimael’s sleeve. 

“ If I prove the fact of your wife’s death to your satisfaction by 
means of this Spaniard’s deposition, you will not withhold the re- 
ward you promised ? ” he asked. 

Islimael turned upon him indignantly. 

“ Am I the kind of man to break my word ? ” he asked. 

“No, no-; of course not,” answered the other, '“for you can afford 
to keep it. Honor and honesty are luxuries which rich men need 
not deny themselves.” 

Ishmael shut his door, and Dumont strolled away toward the Rue 
St. Antoine, thoughtful, anxious even, yet feeling that up to this 
point things were going smoothly for him. 

“It has been a troublesome business,” he told himself, “ and will 
be difficult to cany neatly through to the finish, for this Ishmael is 
no fool. But it is easier and safer than a forged acte de d^ccs. My 
kinsman is right. It is not a pleasant thing to go back to the 
bagne ; I had enough of that free gymnasium thirty years ago. It 
hardened my muscles and braced my limbs ; but it planted a worm 
in the core of my heart, a worm that has never died, and never will 
while that heart beats — the inexorable hatred of my fellow-men.” 

Ishmael’s dinner was the briefest business, for he w'as too much 
disturbed in mind to take more than a crust of bread and a tumbler 
of wine. His real motive in postponing his visit to the Cit6 Jeanne 
d’Arc was the desire to arm himself Avith a small American re- 
volver, before entering a neighborhood which was perhaps more 
familiar to him than to Dumont. In the course of his long labors 
in the cause of the working population of Paris he had taken pains 
to insj^ect all the principal settlements of poverty "within the fortifica- 
tions ; and this Cite Jeanne d’Arc he knew to be one of the very 
worst, a standing disgrace and dishonor to a civilized country, more 
hideous and revolting in its filth and squalor than the vilest concate- 
nation of reeded hovels ever inhabited by sweltering blackamoors in 


AN ISHMAELITE, 


293 


an African swamp, or the foulest village street in Turkey or Persia. 
He had inspected the Cite Jeanne d’Arc, and had protested against 
its horrors in the public pai3ers ; he had taken its construction and 
its architecture, its ventilation, drainage, and water-supjjly, as an 
admirable example of what ought not to be permitted in any pigsty 
or cattle-shed : how much less in any human dwelling ! He had 
lifted up his voice in high places against this terrible instance of 
man’s inhumanity to man ; but there are vested interests in Paris as 
well as in London, and the Cite Jeanne d’Arc, with its fifteen hun- 
dred apartments, giving shelter to fifteen hundred different families, 
still cumbered the ground yonder on the southward side of Paris. 

What infamy, what treason, might not be reasonably expected in 
such a place ! A brave man is never foolhardy. Ishmael had a 
little revolver which he kept expressly — like an old hat or a pair of 
strong boots — for explorations in doubtful neighborhoods, and he 
wore it in a fashion of his own. He attached the pistol to a leather 
strap, fastened round his wrist, and carried it snugly concealed up 
the sleeve of his coat. In the moment of danger his weapon was in 
his hand in a moment, ready for action. There was no fumbling in 
breast or in pocket, no movement which could be stopped or antici- 
pated by the foe. In a breath the pistol slid into its place, and his 
finger was on the trigger, ready to fire. 

He drove to the Avenue des Gobelins, odorous of tanners’ yards 
and workshops, and stoj^ped at a somewhat disreputable-looking 
cafe-restaurant, on the pavement in front of which there was a col- 
ony of small iron tables. Dumont was seated at one of them, with 
the regulation carafon of brandy and a siphon of eau de seltz at his 
elbow. 

He j)aid the waiter, and was ready to accompany Ishmael in a 
minute. The summer dusk was deepening, the sky was crimson 
behind the great white archway and the gilded dome, the fountains 
and statues far away to the west. The lamps were lighted in the 
shabby cafes and shops round about, as Ishmael and his companion 
walked across a region of waste j^laces and scattered houses which 
has since undergone considerable alteration, to the Cite Jeanne d’Arc. 

“You seem to know the way,” said Dumont. 

“ There are very few of the slums of Paris in which I do not know 
my way,” answered Ishmael. 

“ Ah, I remember. You have gone in for the amelioration of the 
workman’s snrroundings, the elevation of his mind by means of white- 
wash and spring water. You have found it hard work, I’m afraid.” 

“ I have found it very hard work. Unhappily the initial difficulty 
lies with the workman himself. He has, for the most i)art, a hered- 
itary love of dirt, the fault of bad legislation and dishonest landlords 
wlio have left him to wallow in the mire from generation to genera- 
tion until the mire has become his natural element. He has an- 
other fault, which is a rooted disinclination to do anything on his 
own part for the improvement of his surroundings, were it so much 
as to knock in a nail, or sweep down a cobweb. He looks to the 
landlord for everything ; and as, in a genm’al way, the landlord does 
nothing, the result is — such a place as this.” 


294 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


They were on the threshold of the Cite Jeanne d’Arc. They 
stood, with a momentary hesitation, at the end of a shallow canal of 
mild, once a paved way, but from which the paving stones had long 
been rooted up, and which was now a channel where the inhabitants 
flung their refuse of all kinds, where the housewife emptied her pail 
and the laundress her tub. On either side this dismal gulf stood a 
pile of building, gray, gloomy, prison-like in the midsummer twi- 
light, rising stage above stage, blank and flat and monotonous in 
form, to the slated roof ; a dead wall, as of a jail, pierced with win- 
dows of the same unornamental pattern ; windows in which shat- 
tered panes, straw, and newspapers were the rule. 

Through the mud and filth of this canal Ishmael waded after his 
guide to a door half-way down the alley. Here Dumont entered, 
and led the way up a staircase, provided with the usual rope instead 
of a baluster rail. On every story there was a narrow passage, en- 
tirely without light or ventilation, leading to the different apart- 
ments in each of which a family was lodged. In some cases x>anels 
had been knocked out of the doors, or had drox:)ped out from sheer 
rottenness and decay. In many windows glass was entirely absent, 
other casements were immovable in their frames by reason of the 
broken condition of the iron fastenings. Health, cleanliness, de- 
cency were alike imj)ossible in such dwelling-places ; but had these 
huge caravansaries been planned in the first instance as a hotbed for 
vice and crime, for discontent and revolution, the arrangements 
could not have been better adapted for the juiriooses in view. 

The two men mounted slowly, cautiously, groping their way up 
the dilaj)idated stairs to the foiirth story, and then, still groining 
along the narrow x^assage, to a door at the end, which Dumont 
opened without ceremony. 

The window, with almost every pane shattered, faced the west, 
and the last gleams of the sunset showed red athwart the rotten 
framework, through which came the first untainted air that Ish- 
mael had breathed since he entered the barrack. Against the wall 
stood an iron bedstead, upon which a man was lying, dressed in 
shirt and trousers, with bare brown feet showing beyond the x 3 ieco 
of sacking which served as a coverlet, and with a sailor’s scarlet cax 3 
upon his raven black hair — a Sx3aniard evidently. So far Dumont 
had sx3oken the truth. 

There was another man in the room, seated at a table near the 
bed, playing some game at cards by himself, by the light of a single 
candle stuck in an old claret bottle. He, too, looked like a Spaniard 
and a sailor. 

“ Has he been any worse since I left you ? ” asked Dumont of this 
man. 

“No worse, the same always. As weak as a baby, and drowsy, 
tiene sueno, tiene muchisimo sueno.” 

“I must try to rouse him for a short time, at any rate,” said Du- 
mont. “ You can go and smoke a cigar in the x^assage, amigo, while 
monsieur talks to your mate. It will not be long.” 

He offered his case to the Spaniard, whose dirty claw-like fingers 
snatched at a couple of trabucos greedily. Not often did such lux- 


AN ISHMAELITE. 295 

nries come his way, and he shuffled out to the dark, dii*ty corridor 
in supreme content. 

“Fernando, awake!” said Dumont, taking hold of the sleeping 
sailor’s shoulder, and shaking him gently. 

“ Is it not rather dangerous to awaken a dying man ? ” asked Ish- 
mael, looking intently at the Spaniard’s statuesque face. 

“ He would ffleep himself into the grave if w^e did not rouse him 
now and then to force food or drink upon him — a few spoonfuls of 
soup, ora little wine or water,” answered Dumont. “There is no 
use standing upon punctilio. He cannot live long, and when he dies 
the secret of your wife’s fate will die with him.” 

“ How is that ? ” 

“ Because he is the only survivor of the crew of the ship on board 
which she died.” 

“ The ship was wrecked, then ? ” 

“Yes ; and this w^as the only man saved.” 

“What is the matter with him?” 

“Heaven knows. General decay, perhaps. The doctor who 
sometimes visits this den has looked at him, shaken his head, and 
gone his w'ay. Nothing to be done.” 

He had been trying to rouse the sailor all through this conversa- 
tion, and at last succeeded. The man lifted his heavy eyelids, and 
looked with dim, dreamy eyes at the tw’o faces bent over him. His 
own face was marble white as the countenance of death itself, and 
almost expressionless. 

“ This is the husband of the young woman wdio died on board the 
‘ Loro,’ ” said Dumont. “ I want you to tell him the circumstances 
of her death, and what happened afterward.” 

The Spaniard stared vaguely, like a man wdio cannot follow the 
drift of what he hears. 

“Stay!” said Ishmael, “before you question him further, it 
W’ould be well to have another witness. Is there any one you can 
summon more respectable than that fellow who W'ent out just now? ” 

Dumont shrugged his shoulders. 

“ In this aviaiy the birds are all of the haw'k tribe,” he said. 

“ And do both these sailors understand French?” 

“Both.” 

“ Then you had better call the friend back. You can take down 
the Spaniard’s deposition, and his friend can witness it.” 

“Good.” , 

He opened the door and called, “Pedro! you are wanted,” and 
Pedro came strolling in with his first cigar half smoked. “ If mon- 
sieur has no objection,” he said, and went on smoking, nodding his 
acquiescence wdien Dumont told him for what he was wanted. 

There was considerable difficulty in rousing the dormant con- 
sciousness of the sick sailor ; but at last, by repeating the words 
“Loro,” shipwreck, Valparaiso, Dumont succeeded in penetrating 
the clouded brain ; the dull eyes showed a faint gleam of intelli- 
gence, the blue lips moved slowdy. “ On board the ‘ Loro yes— 
there was a young w'oman — alone — veiy sad— a woman wdio sat in 
a corner of the deck all day, and w’ept often, when she thought no 


296 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


one was looking. Wo had a bad passage, stormy and long, and 
when we had been at sea three weeks the young woman fell ill of a 
fever. There was only one other woman on board — the captain’s 
wife — and she was sea-sick and frightened, and too ill to look after 
the girl who was down with fever. They found her dead in her 
berth one morning. She was a singer called La Bonita. She was 
thrown into the sea at sunset, off Cape Horn. The captain made 
an entry in his log ; but within three days we struck upon a rock 
near the Falklands, and ship, and log, and captain Avere all at the 
bottom of the sea four hours afterward. I got off in one of the 
boats with the captain’s wife and son, a poor little lad of nine, weak 
and sickly. We were out four days and nights before Ave Avere 
picked up by a French steamer bound for Buenos Ayres. The cap- 
tain’s wdfe died before Ave got into port, from the consequences of 
exposure to the sea and the weather, and the boy died in the hospi- 
tal soon after.” 

This story, told slowly, disjointedly, but still plainly enough in 
its facts, was listened to with grave and gloomy attention by Ish- 
mael. He heard, but he heard Avith doubt and suspicion. Such a 
story was easily told. Such events have often hapj^ened — might have 
happened in this case, just as the sailor had related them. A Avoman 
might have died of fever on board a ship called the “Loro,” and 
none but this Spanish sailor might remain to tell her fate. But how 
could he, Ishmael, be sure that the Avoman Avho so died A\^as his 
wife Paquerette ? It AA^as to Dumont’s interest to trump up some 
plausible story, in order to earn the i^Komised reward. 

“ Are you convinced ? ” asked Dumont presently, looking up from 
the Sheet of paper on which he had written the sailor’s statement, 
while Ishmael sat silent, with bent brows. 

“Not altogether. Granted that this man’s story is true. How 
can I be sure that the Avoman Avho died on board the ‘ Loro ’ Avas my 
Avife ? ” 

“ Fnend Fernando was curious enough to provide himself with a 
memorial of her existence, which may, perhaps, convince you,” an- 
SAvered Dumont. “ He felt keenly interested in that lonely pas- 
senger, and after her death he went into her cabin and jDossessed 
himself of the feAv poor treasures she had left — some trinkets of 
trifling value, and a packet of letters. He had them hidden in his 
shirt at the time of the wreck. The tiinkets he sold at Buenos 
Ayres, the letters he has under his lulloAV to-night. Would you like 
to see them ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

Dumont groped under the Avretched apology for a ijillow, and pro- 
duced a little packet of letters, which looked as if it had been steeped 
in sea water. 

The writing was all blurred and blotted, but Ishmael kneAv that 
neat, small penmanship, that gilt coronet and cipher in the corner 
of the paper, only too well. Slowly, and Avith darkening broAV he 
looked over the letters. They bore the date of the fatal year in his 
life — the year that had taken aAvay his brothers and given him back 
his inheritance— the year that had robbed him of Avife and of friend. 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


297 


They were the seducer’s letters to his victim — Faust to Marguerite, 
Mephistopheles standing at his shoulder and guiding his pen. 

Ishmael juit the letters into his pocket, and took out a handful of 
gold which he thrust into the Spaniard’s clammy hand. The eye- 
lids had sunk again upon the marble cheeks, and he was breathing 
heavily, slowly. 

“ It would have been only justice if I had killed that man,” said 
Paquerette’s husband. 

Dumont read over the statement which the Spaniard Pedro signed 
as witness. Ishmael opened his pocketbook, and counted out the 
promised reward in notes, which he handed to Dumont. 

“ You are satisfied ? ” asked the agent. 

“ Y^es, I am satisfied. The story is sad, and strange ; but after 
all it is not incredible that she should die thus abandoned, and 
alone.” 

He took up his hat to go. 

“ If this man is dying, and the doctor can do no more for him, he 
ought at least to see a priest,” he said. “ I will send a good cure, 
whom I know, to talk to him. 

“ I am afraid it will be wasted trouble for you and the curd,” 
answered Dumont carelessly. “ My friend Fernando is a difficult 
subject when he is awake. But you must please yourself. Shall I 
go back to the Avenue des Gobelins with you ? ” 

“ There’s no occasion : I can find my way.” 


CHAPTER XXXVI. 

“ FOR, LO ! THE WINTER IS PAST.” 

It was nearly eleven o’clock. The lamps and Chinese lanterns 
of the festival in the Legitimist quarter made a glow of light above 
the roofs and dormers of the sombre old houses, like the lurid glare 
of a conflagration ; while on every gust of summer wind there 
floated the music of a military band, softened by distance. The 
pavement in front of the Clavaroche mansion was crowded with 
idlers, waiting to see the caniages drive in through the broad gate- 
way, idlers who remarked audibly upon the costumes of the maskers, 
and tried to guess their identity. The Baroness Clavaroche, gor- 
geous in a gown of yellow satin and point de Venise, was stationed 
in the vestibule of her salon of roses, an octagon room lined with 
palms and tropical ferns, the rich bloom of cactus. Cape jasmine, 
and orange-flowers, receiving her guests as they filed past her to the 
ballroom. 

There were no announcements, mystification being the chief 
feature of the festival. The guests handed their cards of invitation 
to the groom of the chambers, who threw them into a gigantic 
Oriental bowl on a carved ebony stand, which stood near the chief 
entrance. The baroness alone was unmasked. But later in the 
evening, when the duty of receiving her guests was over, she too 


298 


AN I81IMAELITE. 


was to have her share in the general bewilderment, provided always 
that in sharp-eyed Paris there was a single mortal incapable of re- 
cognizing that Flemish torso, and the peculiar setting on of the fair 
Flemish head. 

Baron Clavaroche, a fish veiy much out of water in the midst of 
the masked crowd, moved slowly to and fro among the throng in 
sober evening dress, over which, to satisfy his wife’s fancy, he had 
consented to wear a small Venetian mantle of gold-embroidered 
brocade. He wore the Legion of Honor, with its eagle in diamonds, 
not long received from tlie imperial hand ; and as he circulated 
among his guests, masked among the crowd of other masks, he had 
the felicity of hearing himself, his wife, and his fortunes discussed 
in the free and easy way in which friends talk of each other under 
such circumstances. There is something in the very act of giving a 
grand entertainment which seems to put a man and woman out of 
court, as it were. Every one finds something to ciiticise, something 
to condemn, something to grumble about. There is nothing so good 
that it might not have been better ; there are no arrangements so per- 
fect as to be without a hitch somewhere ; and then comes the chorus 
of complainings : — “ Did you ever see anything so badly managed as 
the entrance for the carriages ? ” “ We waited at least an hour.” 

“ That avalanche of roses must have cost a fortune ! ” “ Nothing 

to peo2^1e who make money by the wholesale ruin of their fellow’- 
creatures, as old Bourley made his.” “He was at the bottom of 
the Mexican loan.” “ Morny.” “ Jecker.” “ Highway robbery un- 
der a new name. ” ‘ ‘ The baron himself had not a sou. ” ‘ ‘ Married 

him for the sake of his title.” “ The supj^er is to be in a marquee 
at the end of the garden, .five minutes’ walk.” “Pleasant, if the 
night should be wet.” “ Every sign of a thunderstorm.” “Elec- 
tric light sure to be a failure.” “They narrowdy esca2:>ed a fiasco 
at the ball at the Tuileries. Bather a daring experiment for Ma- 
dame Clavaroche.” “ My dear, that woman’s whole career is an ex- 
peiiment. ” 

These were the rags and scraj^s of conversation which gieeted 
the master of the house as he moved restlessly from j^illar to post, 
now gazing upward at the festoons of summer roses, the dazzling 
crystal chandeliers, the innumerable wax candles, thinking of what 
his mother would have suffered could she have seen the desecration 
of those noble old rooms, this riotous luxury, this wild expenditure 
on flowers and candles and decorations which w’ould be sw’ept aw'ay 
to the rubbish-heap to-morrow — she who had counted every sou, yet 
who at her j^oorest had scnqmlously set ajiart the tenth of her in- 
come for charity, and had often exceeded that amount at the cost 
of her own comfort, nay, of almost the necessities of life. And 
wuthal, she had been cheerful, and had delighted in those gray, 
grave old rooms, and the few grave and gray old friends who oc- 
casionally assembled there. 

He thought of those parties of the past, to-night, while the w^altz 
of maskers swept past him like a mountain torrent, and the solid old 
oak floor seemed to rock under that rhythmical tread. He remem- 
bered the little knot of elderly men and women grouped in front of 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


299 


the old hearth yonder, now hidden behind a sloping bank of Prov- 
ence roses. He recalled the slow, measured speech, the political 
discussions, the prophecies of impending doom for this Imperial 
similacrum, which seemed so fair and sound, and yet was hollow and 
rotten, and on the point of falling like a palace built out of a pack 
of cards. So, at least, the worthy adherents of Hemi Cinq had 
gone on protesting for the last fifteen years. And now they were 
all dispersed, those shadows of the past ; and the children of the 
Empire filled the room with their garish mirth, their turbulent 
pleasure. 

They flew in circles past him, a whirlpool of color and brightness, a 
phantasmagoria of strange figures — Watteau shej^herdesses, Mexican 
post-boys, Turkish generals, Spanish bull-fighters, Swiss cowherds, 
Chinese mandarins, gyjjsies from wild strange lands between the 
Danube and the Baltic, polichinelles, feu-follets, debardeurs, postil- 
ions of Longjumeau, brigands, coolies, abbes, sweeps, skeletons, 
harlequins, misers, Jews, sailors, demons — all revolving, circulating, 
changing places, like the chips of colored glass in a kaleidoscope. 

The baron crept away from the ball-room in despair. He wan- 
dered through those lace-draped doorways, under festoons of roses, 
wondering where they had carried the good old panelled doors, 
whether perchance they had been carted off to be burned, as some- 
thing demode in the way of architecture, and whether he was hence- 
forth to live in a house without doors. No new change could 
surprise him, after the changes that had already taken place. His 
wife’s taste and his wife’s money had so transformed the good old 
house that there was not within its walls a single spot on which the 
baron could rest the sole of his foot, without having his old habits, 
his old associations outraged by the novelty of his surroundings. 
The violins and violoncellos, the flutes and hautboys sunk into 
silence within their gilded cages, and that maelstrom of dancers 
and colors, gold and glitter, ceased its wild revolving. The dancers 
dispersed slowly in adjoining rooms, or in the garden, where the 
summer moon was shining on a smooth lawn, on flower beds and 
fountains, and on the great crimson and white marquee yonder, 
which was to open its doors at one o’clock j)recisely for supper. 

“Do you know if Lady Constance Danetree is here?” asked a 
Watteau columbine of a Mexican i)ost-boy, on whose arm she leaned, 
as they paced the velvet lawn. 

“ I have not seen her yet.” _ 

“ Do you think you would Know her in a mask ? ” 

“ Do i think I should know Juno if I met her on the boulevard ? 
Lady Constance has a walk and an air that no man with an eye for 
beauty could possibly mistake.” 

“You admire her Very much,” said the columbine, with a faint 
sigh. 

She was one of the prettiest little flgures in the show, dressed all 
in white and pale gray, like a china figure in biscuit and gris-de- 
flandres, powdered wig, white shoes, white frock, white gloves, 
with touches of gray satin here and there, and a gray velvet bodice 
that fitted the plump supple figure as the rind fits the peach. 


300 


AN ISmiAELITE. 


The post-boy looked do^n at her Tvith a mischievous smile play- 
ing round the" corners of his mustachioed lips. The black velvet 
mask left the mouth uncovered. 

“ I think she is the handsomest woman in Paris,” he said ; “ but 
not half so fascinating as a certain little woman I know, who 
has much less pretension to absolute beauty, but who is pourrie de 
chic.” 

“ She is very charming,” said the columbine, whose eveiy-day 
name was AmCdie Jarze, relieved by this avowal ; “I am devoted to 
her. Is it not strange she does not marry ? ” 

“L’embarras du choix,” answered the post-boy, othenvise Ar- 
mand de Keratry. “ She might marry any one, and so she marries 
no one.” 

Armand and Am61ie had been closer friends than ever since their 
adventure in the Quartier Latin. It is wonderful how a little es- 
capade of that kind ripens friendship. There was a secret between 
them, which served as a link. They could not hear of the vicomte’s 
poetry without exchanging stolen glances, or hiding together in 
corners to laugh at their ease. The mere sight of the little man, 
with his faultless gloves and boots, his mean little sallow face and 
intolerable airs, set Amalie and Armand in a mutual fever of fun. 
And after a foitoight of this stolen amusement, Armand de Keratry 
found out all at once that he had had enough of a bachelor’s life 
in Paris ; that the existence was as banal as it was costly ; that it 
would be an absolute economy to many ; and that Amelie Jarze, 
who had most of the faults and follies of her age and epoch, re- 
deemed by good temper and high spirits, was the one young woman 
in all Paris whom he would like to marry. 

His proposal was welcomed by M. and Mine. Jarze, who had 
known him for years. He was not rich, but he had enough for ex- 
istence, even in Paris ; and he had expectations. Had there been any 
prospect of a higher bid for her younger daughter, Mme. Jarze’s 
heart would have hardened itself to stone. But this being the best 
chance that had offered itself after three years of active enterprise in 
the husband-hunting line, Mme. Jarze melted into tears, and drew 
the young man to her moire antique bosom before he was aware. 

“ That child has always adored you,” she murmimed. 

“ Do you really think so ? ” faltered Armand, who liked to imagine 
a tender little soul looking up to him with secret worship, watching 
for his smiles, living upon his kind words. “Do you know, I had 
an idea at one time that Amelie was very much taken by your wealthy 
friend. Monsieur Ishmael ! ” 

“My dear Armand! How could you!” exclaimed his future 
mother-in-law, who was already speculating on the corbeille, and 
tliinking of the lettres de faire part. “ A man of at least seven-and 
thirty — nearly old enough to be her father.” 

Armand glanced at M. Jarze, gray, wrinkled, witli a figure inclin- 
ing to that of Punch, and thought there was a good deal of difference 
between the hypothetical parent and the real article. 

The arrangement was ratified— the dot agreed. It would be a 
drain uj^on the paternal resources, and might involve an appeal to 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


301 


the private purse of the emperor, a man of almost fabulous gene- 
rosity to his dependents. But to see' that cockle-shell bark, his 
younger daughter, moored in a safe haven, M. Jarzo would have un- 
deltaken a task infinitely more difficult. 

And now Amelie hung upon her lover’s arm with the proud sense 
of proprietorship. She was no longer a demoiselle a marier, with 
keen eye ever on the watcIT for the chance of the moment, the sud- 
den opportunity to lead a worthy victim captive. She had secured 
her victim almost unawares, and he wore his chains as if he liked 
them. That light nature of hers was easily made happy. A month 
ago she had been miserable because Ishmael did not care for her. 
^She had told herself that in losing the chance of a magnificent estab- 
lishment she had also lost the one man of all others whom she could 
truly and fondly love. And now she told herself that the one man 
whom she had truly and fondly loved from the very dawn of girlhood 
was the man who was to be her husband, and that her romantic ad- 
miration of Ishmael had been a mere caprice, a girlish whim, of no 
real significance. 

To-night, assured that her costume was a success, she felt that 
there was nothing wanting in her cup of bliss. She would not be 
rich as Armand’s wife, but she could be aristocratic. She would be 
Amelie de Keratry. That “ de ” made amends for much. She had 
always hated the plebeian sound of Jarze, tout court. 

Not so happy was poor Hortense amidst the roses and the lights, 
the glitter and dazzle of the f6te. Clad in a flowing robe of j)urest 
white, with classic sandals, a wreath of oak leaves on her classic 
head, an oak bough in her hand, she represented a Grecian sibyl. It 
was a pretty dress in the abstract, and it became Hortense Jarze’s 
style of beauty, but it was not a good costume for a fancy ball. 
The short skirts and neat ankles, the columbines, the pierrottes, 
and petits chaperons rouges, and berg^res and debardeuses had it all 
their own Avay in the dance ; and as there were a good many Avall- 
flowers among the i3etits creves, young-old men who vowed that 
they had given up dancing ages ago, the dancers could take their 
choice in the motley crowd of dames and damsels, all masked, and 
therefore all on equal terms as to beauty. It was form and pace that 
told at Mine. Clavaroche’s ball. 

Vainly had Hortense sought her poet amid the throng. That 
small, frail figure might Avell be lost in such a crowd. And the 
vicomte had left his intentions doubtful — would not say whether 
he would or would not be present. He stigmatized the whole l)usi- 
ness as a folly — a mere parade and manifesto on the part of a vain, 
])urse-proud woman, who wanted all Paris to talk about her and her 
house. 

“ No doubt she thinks I shall celebrate her ball in a poem, ’ he 
said ; “ send her down to posterity as the giver of the prettiest fete 
of tl)e epocli.” 

“ It Avould make a charming poem,” said Hortense ; “ the croAvd 
of strange costumes of all nations — the music, and floAvers, and sum- 
inei' night-^the mystery of masked faces. Do go to the ball, if it 
were only for the sake of Avu’iting about it. ’ 


302 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


The vicomte mused for a moment, and then shook his head. 

“ It would not be worth tlie trouble,” he said. “ My muse is not 
inspired by chiffons.” 

“ But chiffons rule the world in our day,” ar^ied Hortense, who 
knew the poet’s thirst for renown. “ Granted that such a subject 
is beneath your pen, yet you must know, that a poem of that kind, 
full of i)ersonalities, would set all Paris talking about the author.” 

“It mio-ht,” mused Pontchartrain, twirling the pointed end of his 
mustache^with those delicately tapering fingers. “People always 
talk most about bagatelles. What a wonderful knowledge of the 
world you have. Mademoiselle Jarze.” 

“I have been obliged to endure my life in it for the last five, 
years,” she answered, wearily. 

And now the sybil was there, but had not as yet discovered her 
Apollo. It was some time after midnight when Lady Constance 
Danetree’s coup6 drove under the porch. She had come very late, 
caring little about the festival, and ar xious to avoid the block of 
carnages. She looked superb in a Venetian costume of dark-red 
velvet, gold brocade, and black fur, a robe such as Titian or Moroni 
would have loved to paint. The ruff of old Italian point opened just 
wide enough to show the noble curve of the throat, and was clasped 
by a large square emerald, of fabulous value, set with black pearls. 
M. de Keratry had been right when he said that a black velvet mask 
would go but a veiy little way toward disguising such a woman as 
Constance Danetree. There were not three women in Paris whose 
heads were set upon their shoulders with such a queen like gTace. 
The figure and bearing of this daughter of Erin were altogether ex- 
ceptional. No mask could hide, no crowd efface her. Other masks 
flocked round her as soon as she appeared in the ball-room. Every 
one recognized her. One man told her that she was either Titian’s 
Queen of Cyprus or Lady Constance Danetree. She was entreated 
to dance. 

“ Venetian matrons did not waltz,” she answered. 

“ No, their little amusements were of a more serious kind. They 
played at poisoning, and made Aqua Tofana as modern children 
make taffy. But this is no reason why Lady Constance Danetree 
should not honor one of the most devoted among her slaves,” urged 
an abb6 with powdered hair and diamond shoe-buckles. 

“I am not Constance Danetree, but a noble Venetian of the six- 
teenth century, and I have never learned the dances of the second 
French Empire,” she answered, sailing past him with a gracious bend 
of the beautiful head, undisguised by any ornament save a single 
string of pearls twisted among the massive plaits. 

She mingled with the crowd which lined the ball-room, leaving 
only a central space for the dancers, and moved slowly onward, 
pausing from time to time to talk to friends, or to watch the waltz- 
ers. 

And now a now sensation made itself evident among the throng. 
A suppressed titter, subjugated as much as possilde for decency’s 
sake, circulated in that hall of fading roses, and glittering crystals, 
and myriad wax caudles beginning to bend and gutter in their sock- 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


303 


ets in an atmosphere rapidly becoming tropical. A figure, unseen 
till a few minutes ago, had inspii-ed the whole room with a sudden 
sense of the ridiculous. 

It was a female figure, suggestive of Kubens and the Louvre, re- 
calling an apotheosis of Marie de Medicis ; yet still more vividly re- 
calling the nearer image of the Belle Helene. It was a lady in the 
full matuiity of a Flemish beauty, fat, fair, and tliirty, clad as the 
world is accustomed to see ladies clad across the footlights — but 
rarely without that intervening rampart. A woman on the stage is 
sacred as a priestess by an altar. She belongs to the w^orld of art. 
She is a figure in a picture. She loses her individuality, and is only 
a part of a whole. But a woman parading in a ball-room on a level 
with the eye, rubbing shoulders with the crowd, is only a woman; 
and in her case there is no excuse for a sin against womanly delicacy. 

“Tiens ! ” cried a toreador as the lady passed, leaning on the arm 
of an ambassador, “ la belle Helene ! ” 

“ Helene," said another ; “ mais pas trop belle." 

“ Quelle brassee de chaire humaine,” whispered a Pierrot. 

“ C’est plus Schneider que Schneider," muttered a Roumanian 
gypsy. 

The fair being sailed on triumphant, hearing only a vague buzz 
of admiration. And now the band in the ball-room stmck uj) the 
march from “ La Princesse de Trebizonde," and a second orchestra 
hidden in the garden repeated the strain. It was a signal for supper, 
and for unmasking. Helene and her ambassador led the way, and 
the throng followed ; a dense procession of splendid and eccentric 
costumes, jingling bells, waving plumes, clashing armor, demons, 
houris, Turks, crusaders. 

Lady Constance Danetree, embarrassed by the number of her ad- 
mirers, all entreating the honor of her hand, paused in the midst of 
a little circle, undecided wdiich mask she should favor. Abbe, 
pierrot, red Indian, mandarin, toreador, they all pressed round 
her, each hoping to be chosen, when the circle was suddenly broken 
by a mail, taller than the tallest of them by nearly half a head, a 
man -with the red cap of Liberty on his dark short-cut hair, and his 
stalwart figure clad in the carmagnole jacket of ’93, a costume that 
had a strange and almost sinister air amid the satin and velvet, the 
gold and spangles, the plumes and flowers of that glitteriiig crowd. 

‘ ‘ If madame will honor me, ” murmured the mask, offering his 
arm. 

Lady Constance accepted it instantly, and passed into the moonlit 
garden on the Republican’s arm, leaving her circle of admirers 
plantes la. 

“ M'hat a hideous figure,” said one. 

“The ghost of revolution and bloodshed,” said another. “The 
police ought not to allow such a costume. It is much too suggestive 
for the temper of the age.” 

“ I should not be surprised if the gentleman himself came from the 
Rue de Jerusalem. Tlie policy of the empire has not been to make 
u 1 forget ’93, but to remind us what a horrible era it was, and how 
lucky w€f are to escai^e a repetition of its terrors.” 


304 : 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


The carmagnole, the red cap, the dark hair, the firm chin under 
the velvet mask, the tall figure and stately shoulders, the low reso- 
nant voice — not for a moment had Constance Danetree doubted the 
individuality of this ghost of the fatal year of ’93. 

Her heart beat fast and loud as she walked by the unknown’s side, 
across the moonlit grass — slowly, lingeringly, prolonging to the ut- 
termost that brief journey toward the great marquee yonder, the can- 
vas doors of which were drawn wide apart, revealing the dazzling 
interior — circular tables, diminishing in diameter toward the centre, 
circles within circles, on the plan of the Exposition, and all the ta- 
bles flashing with silver and many-colored glass, flowers, china, and 
all those artistic compositions in the way of pastry and confectionery 
which elevate cookeiy to a fine art. The banquet had an air of 
Fairyland under the electric light. The guests in their rainbow 
colors and tinsel and gems were crowding round the tables, filling 
in the circles. 

“ I do not believe there will be room for us in there,” said Lady 
Constance. 

“Do you think not ?” said the Carmagnole eagerly. “Would 
you rather sit here in the moonlight, and let me bring you some 
supper, or would it be too cold ? ” 

“Cold! the atmosphere is positive enjoyment after that tropical 
ball-room. If you do not mind the trouble I had much rather sit 
here.” 

There were groups of rustic chairs and little Japanese tables scat- 
tered about in the cool verdant garden, and already some of these 
had been pounced upon by those couples who would always rather 
sup in a quiet corner tete-^-tgte, were it never so cramj)ed or incon- 
venient. 

The Carmagnole selected the pleasantest spot, a rustic bench shel- 
tered from the night wind by a group of magnolias, masses of dark, 
shining verdure, with white goblet-shaped blossoms. 

Here Lady Constance seated herself, while the Carmagnole went in 
quest of supper. He had not far to go ; the attendance was perfect, 
and he had a servant at his comma.rd in a few minutes, an-anging 
the little rustic table, bringing the most delicate dishes, and iced 
champagne in a great glass pitcher. 

From the marquee came a Babel of voices. Masks had been just 
this moment removed. La Belle Helene, in the person of the Bar- 
oness Clavaroche, was in the central circle, welcoming her guests. 
Some of the greatest people in Paris were among that motley crowd. 
Not the emperor, whose declining health was a reason for his ab- 
sence from any private festival ; nor the empress, who had never 
taken kindly to Mme. Clavaroche. But, short of the very highest, 
there was no splendor of name or title wanting to the baroness’ 
ball. 

“ A brilliant scene,” said Constance, with her face turned toward 
the marquee. 

She had not yet removed her mask, nor had the Carmagnole. 

“ And to-morrow there will be nothing left of it but a memorv,’,’ 
he answered gravely. “ Happy those for whom the memoiy wiirbe 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


305 


linked with a face they love, not a mere garish vision of strange 
faces and strange finery.” 

“Will it be a sweet or a bitter memory for yon, Monsienr Ish- 
mael ? ” asked Constance, smiling at him under the lace border of 
her mask. 

“ You know me, then ? ” he said, half -surprised. 

“Do you suppose that piece of black velvet across your face can 
hide your individuality ? You would be a very commonplace i^erson 
if you could disguise yourself so easily.” 

“ You knew me from the first moment then ? ” he said, laying 
aside his mask, looking at her with eyes dark with deepest feeling, 
as thev sat opposite each other at the little supper-table, half in 
moonlight and half in shadow. 

If Madame Clavaroche’s guests in general had been as indifferent 
to the pleasures of the table as these two, the banquet might as well 
have been a stage-feast of painted fruit and empty goblets. Lady 
Constance had eaten half a peach, and her companion had emptied 
his champagne glass, and that was all. The attentive footman, see- 
ing them preoccupied, whisked off the dainty little dishes to a table 
on the other side of the garden, where a columbine and a Mexican 
post-boy were clamorous for food. 

“ Yes, I knew you from the first.” 

“ And you honored me with your arm in preference to those gen- 
tlemen round you — some of the most distinguished names in 
France.” 

‘ ‘ I see those great people every day ; and you are a stranger. 
There is always a jffeasure in novelty.” 

She spoke in her easiest manner — gracious, calm, beautiful beyond 
all other women in that crowded scene where beautiful women were 
many. But her heart was beating passionately. She felt that this 
man, who had so long and so persistently avoided her, would not 
have thrown himself in her way to-night without a motive. The 
motive would reveal itself presently, perhaps. In the meantime her 
duty as a woman was to be as calm as marble ; to ask no questions ; 
to reveal no warmer interest than that faint curiosity which society 
calls sympathy. 

“ It is very good of you to remember that it is long since we met,” 
said Ishmael ; and then in a lower voice, “ To me the time has been 
intolerably long, and I thought it was to be only the beginning of a 
hopeless forever.” 

“ Indeed ! ” exclaimed Lady Constance lightly ; “ yet as your iso- 
lation from society was a voluntary retirement, I do not see that you 
have any right to complain. I was informed that you were one of 
the few who refused the baroness’ invitation for to-night ? ” 

“ That is quite true.” 

“ And yet you are here ? ” 

“And yet I am here. Within an hour or two of my coming I had 
no idea of being here. Lady Constance, can you imagine that the 
whole conditions of a man’s life may be changed in a few hours ? 
That a man who has been a slave, fettered and tied by an obligation 
of the i^ast, may suddenly find himself free — the chain snapped 
JP.O 


306 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


asunder — liis own master ? Such a change has happened in my life. 
I am my own master ; free to go where I like ; to see whom- 1 like ; 
free to love and to woo a noble and j^erfect woman, and to win her 
if I can.” 

He was leaning across the narrow table, his clasped hands resting 
upon it, his eyes looking into her eyes. Never had the dark, finely 
featured face looked handsomer than under the scarlet cap of lib- 
erty, flushed with gladness, the eyes shining in the moonlight, the 
lips tremulous with deepest feeling. 

Constance Danetree’s eyelids drooped under that intense gaze. She 
tried to make light of the situation and to stave off the dcnoilment. 

“ You have changed your mind, then, since last June, when you 
told Mademoiselle Jarze that you intended never to marry ? ” 

“ Yes ; for in those days I fancied myself bound by an old tie. 
And now I know that tie has long been broken, and I am free — have 
been free for years past, biit did not know of my liberty.” 

“You are talking enigmas,” said Constance. 

“Shall I speak more plainly?” he asked, drawing still nearer to 
her, lowering his voice, lest the very leaves of the magnolia, whisper- 
ing gently to themselves all the while, should have ears to hear him ; 
‘ ‘ in plainest, simplest, truest words, as befits a plain man ? I loved 
you from the first, Constance — from the first sweet hour when we 
met, amidst the frivolous surroundings of a Parisian salon. From 
that hour I was your slave — your worshi23per. I had found my 
ideal, the realization of an old, old dream ; the one woman in this 
world whom I could reverence and adore. I had found her, and my 
heart went to her as the tide goes to the shore, imj^elled by a force it 
knows notj save to know that it is irresistible. I had found her — 
yes, but too late ! I was bound, or believed myself bound, by that 
old tie. And yet I went on meeting you — went on worshij^j^ing you 
—although these li23S were scru23ulously dumb; went on treading 
nearer and nearer the verge of an abyss of dishonor. I might have 
disregarded that old bondage of which the world knew so little; 
might have ignored the past. Yes, this is how Satan would have 
argued had I lent my ear. The day came when I felt that I must go 
no further ; that from this fool’s j3aradise I must escape, at any cost 
to myself. And then, half hoping you would guess that I was in 
some wise the slave of circumstances, I told you that I meant never 
to marry ; and in that hour I left your house, meaning never to tmst 
myself in your presence again. I have lived the life of a hermit 
since that hour ; and now I am a free man. Lady Constance — free to 
win a noble wife, if I can ! ” 

He took her unresisting hand, and raised it to his lips. He had 
drawn his chair nearer to hers in the shadow of the magnolias, and 
the table was no longer between them. 

“ Constance, will you give me no word of hope ? ” 

“ Is the tie of which you speak really broken ? ” she asked gravely. 
“ Have you the right to ask for my love ? ” 

“ The tie is broken — by death.” 

“And there is nothing in your past life— no dishonor, no taint— 
which can lessen your worth in the eyes of such a woman as I ?’” 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


307 


“There is no taint — no dishonor. Commercially, all Paris can 
tell you what I am. Socially, I will answer for myself. I have 
done no wrong ! ” 

“ And you really love me ? ” 

“ As women are rarely loved.” 

“ I am very glad,” she murmured softly, as he bent to listen for 
his fate. “ I am glad you love me, Ishmael, for my heart went out 
to you wuth just the same iiTesistible impulse that night we first 
met. I knew, then, that it was fate. Thank God it is a happy fate, 
and that you give me love for love.” 


CHAPTEE XXXVII. 

“let him drink and forget his poverty.” 

Half-an-hour later, and the festival was beginning to wane. 
Above the many-colored lights of the garden — rose-colored lights, 
azure, and amber, and sapi'diire, and emerald, a fairy illumination 
— the moon was sloping westward, while the clear cold eastern sky 
grew clearer, colder, brighter, with an almost ghastly brightness, 
ghastly in its effect upon some of those unmasked faces, talking, 
laughing, drinking in the great circular marquee, still thronged 
with revellers, some of whom had been eating and drinking, and 
talking and flirting for an hour and more, wliile others had gone 
away and come back again, and while some had only just torn 
themselves away from the ball-room to come in at the fag-end of the 
feast. The more sober among the revellers were going home, scared 
by that opal light in the east. Faded beauties had resumed their 
masks. Mystification was rife ; some among the revellers all the 
more easily puzzled, perhaps, after their enjoyment of the Clava- 
roche champagne, which was of the best brand ever landed on the 
quays of Percy yonder, where, before the aristocratic night was over, 
the docks would be astir with the beginning of the working day. 

In the ball-room the waltzers were revolving to a strange wild 
music, a Cossack melody, dissonant, almost diabolical in its shrill 
minor, with a strange staccato accompaniment of violoncellos and 
double-basses, as of a dance of witches round a caldron. The flame 
of the candles, the flash of crystals, the interwoven rose-garlands 
made a cloud of rosy light above the dancers, the mirrors on the 
wall reflected and multijdied the motley throng, until it seemed an 
endless carnival, stretching into infinite distances. 

The clocks of Paris were striking three when Ishmael re-entered 
the ball-room with Lady Constance on his arm, on the way to her 
carriage. For more than an hour they ha^ sat talking in the shadow 
of the magnolias, while the light feet of pleasure passed and repassed 
ujion the velvet lawn. He had told her his real name, and the story 
of his boyhood at Pen-Hoel, his stepmother’s jealousy, his father’s 
indifference. He had not even shrunk from the terrible revelation 


30S 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


of his mother’s guilty flight — but this he had touched on with but 
fewest words. The details of disgrace were untold ; it was only in j 
extenuation of his father’s unkindiiess that he confessed his mother’s j 
di dionor. ‘ j 

But of his marriage and of Paquerette’s sin he said nothing. It j 
was enough, in his own mind, that he had spoken of a tie, now 
severed. Constance would draw her own inferences. He could not 
bring himself to enter upon the miserable story of his wedded life. 

• And now they were going to part for a few hours ; with the sweet ' 
certainty of meeting daily, of l^ing together in a privileged com- ; 
panionsiiip day by day, until the hour of those espousals which 
should blend two lives into one. Each felt that in the other lived 
the one friend and companion who could make existence perfect. I 
There was a sympathy, a sense of trustfulness and security rarely ^ 
felt even between true lovers. Two minds that had rqrened slowly 
in the double school of thought and experience, two hearts tried and 
tested, bound themselves in a solemn and sacred union — and in 
neither was there the shadow of wavering. Each knew that this 
union of heart and mind meant time and lifelong love. 

As they crossed the ballroom they were met by Amelie, with her 
three-cornered hat stuck jauntily on one side, and her eyes sparkling 
with mischief. 

“ Such fun ! ” she exclaimed to Lady Constance ; “ the two xroets 
are here. The little vicomte, dressed as Ronsard — such a pretty | 
costume — only he has to explain it to everybody, and even then nine' ■ 
out of ten have not the least idea who Ronsard was : peojile are so 
ignorant,” added the Columbine contemptuously. 

“Yes, peoxrle are ignorant,” said Keratry, laughing at her. “I 
don’t think you knew much about Ronsard till I told you half an 
hour ago. Yes, Lady Constance, they are both here. The xroor 
devil who scrawls in, a garret, and the dainty little man who x^ub- 
lishes his carmine sedition with Firmin Didot ; the x>etit creve and 
the teinturier ; and I’m afraid after the manner in which I saw the 
teinturier disposing of the Clavaroche cognac at the buffet just now, 
there may be an exxilosion of some kind before he leaves the ball.” i 
“ How did he get here?” asked Constance, who had been told all 
about that literary interview in the Qiiartier Latin. 

“ I can guess how it all came about,” exclaimed Amelie, who was 
always eager to give information. “ Hortense has been plaguing 
the poor little vicomte to write some verses about this ball, descrii> | 
tive, satirical, personal, the sort of thing to set half Paris by the 
ears ; and knowing his own incapacity, the little wretch has extorted 
a card from Madame Clavaroche, and has brought his friend of the 
Quartier Latin — ths author of ‘ Mes Nuits Blanches.’ ” 

“‘Mes Nuits Blanches,’” repeated Ishmael. “What do you 
know of the man who wi’ote that book, mademoiselle ? ” 

“ Ah, Monsieur Ishmael,” cried Amelie ; “is that you ? How can 
you venture to wear the cap of liberty in a house which is Imperi- 
alist to the last degree ? What do I know of the author of ‘ Mes 
Nuits Blanches ? ’ Very little ; but he and Monsieur de Keratry are 
like brothers.” 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


309 


“You know Hector de Valnois ? ” said Ishmael ; “ and lie is here 
to-night ! ” 

“ A man who wrote a book of verses called ‘ Mes Nuits Blanches ’ 
is here to-night, dressed as Francois Villon, and I am afraid not in 
a condition to do credit to the Muses,” replied De Keratry; “but as 
the father of our lyric poets was an arrant Bohemian and black- 
guard, that hardly matters. Were Villon here in the flesh he would 
no doubt be as drunk as his representative. The man I mean calls 
himself Monsieur Nimporte, and lives in a little street at the back of 
the Luxembourg. Do you know his real name and his history ? ” 

“I knew something about him many years ago,” answered Ish- 
mael, as he passed on to the vestibule with Constance on his arm. 

The court-yard was full of carriages, and the grave old street be- 
yond was illuminated by the long rows of carriage lamps, garish in 
the pearly light of morning. Lady Constance and her companion 
had to W’ait some time for her brougham , to be brought up to the 
door. They stood side by side under the marquee, amidst the 
orange trees and rose bushes which decorated the double flight of 
steps and the wide, stately doorway — stood and talked to each 
other, happy in the new sweet sense of union. Yet no longer on 
Ishmael’s part was the gladness without alloy. He was thinking of 
his false friend, the traitor, the seducer, the destroyer. He was 
waiting with feverish eagerness for the moment that was to bring 
them face to face at last, after long years, by accident, in a crowded 
l)allroom. What matter, where they met, so that they stood sword 
in hand, foot to foot, at last ? As he parted with Constance at the 
door of her brougham, and as he bent once more to kiss the gloved 
hand, there was a gloomy vision before his eyes. Ere the world were 
a day older this new delicious dream of life might end for him sud- 
denly, amidst the thickening shadows of a bloody death. 

He watched the carriage I’oll away in the circular sweep of the 
court-yard, through the pillared gateway, and then he went back to 
the ballroom and to the garden beyond, to look for his enemy, the 
bitter foe whose face he had never seen since they parted in friend- 
sliip, hand clasping hand, smiling lips uttering fair w'ords. How 
diligently he had sought for this man in the years that w^ere past and 
gone, using all known means of search, employing those skilled in 
hunting down their fellow-men, and all his inquiries had been in 
vain. All his hired agents had failed. And now, upon this night 
above all other nights, this magical, ineffable hour in man’s life, in 
the first hour of triumphant love, he was told that the traitor was 
under the same roof that sheltered him, the injured husband. 

He thought of Paquerette in the days of her innocence, unspoiled 
by the knowledge of evil. He thought of their child, lying in her 
little grave in the field of rest. He thought of Paquerette’s death, 
the ghastly story which he had heard a few hours ago — that lonely 
death on a rotten ship, far out in the lonely Pacific. And was he to 
spare this man, wiien they two should stand face to face ? 

It was in the garden — chosen resort of the revellers and the drink- 
ers— the people who eat half a dozen suppers in an evening, the men 
who would rather sit in corners and smoke and drink absinthe or 


310 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


kirscli than waltz to the music of the first band in Paris, under a J 
shower of fading rose-leaves. It was among the fast and the furious 
that Ishmael looked for his foe. : 

The garden was crowded Avith maskers, and had a look as of a : 
witch’s Sabbath in the cold, clear dawn ; a light which gave a ghastly I 
look to common things, and made the entrance to the great striped ' 
marquee, with its flare of light and clamor of voices, and glare of i 
gewgaw decoration, seem like the entrance to Tophet. , Ishmael ; 
walked slowly in and out amout the groups of revellers, half in the 
light of Chinese lanterns, lurid, multi-colored, half in the steel-blue 
morning. He walked in and out by winding pathways, amidst great 
masses of evergreens, so arranged as to give an air of space and 
grandeur to the town garden, till he came to a group around a 
fountain— a wide marble basin, with a marble Triton spouting water 
high up into the morning air. 

A man was sitting on. the broad margin of the basin, spouting 
verse — a man in a shabby mediseval costume, rusty velvet doublet, 
black trunk hose, pointed shoes, a broken rope hanging loose round 
his neck, suggestive of that hangman’s noose which Maitre Villon 
so narrowly escaped. A thin, wasted figure — a pale face, with iron- 
gray hair flowing in the morning breeze ; a sickly pallor that gave a 
spectral air to the light blue eyes, just noAV illuminated with the 
fever of strong drink. 

“ Bravo, Maitre Francois,” cried the little audience, when the poet 
paused. 

Ishmael stood outside the circle, looking at the pale, wan face, at 
the tremulous hands with which the poet took bottle and glass from 
one of his audience, and poured out a bumper of champagne. 

“ Do you know, gentlemen, that Widow Cliquot and I have been 
strangers for years,” he said, in his drunken voice ; “a ta sante, ma 
belle veuve, thou art the poet’s only nepenthe.” 

He drank a long draught, and then flung his glass into the foun- 
tain, shattering it into splinters that flew like a shower of diamonds 
across the sparkling waters. 

“A Jewish wedding,” he cried, “symbol of eternal union — the 
marriage of the poet and the queen of vineyards, la belle Cliquot.” 

And then he burst again into verse, maundering verse, a 2 )ot- 
pourri of Villon, Konsard, Voiture ; the lees and rinsings of a 
mfemory that had once been richly stored. His limbs had the sjias- 
modic trembling of the absinthe drinker. Those pale eyes of his 
had the look that forebodes a day when the brain behind them will ! 

be a blank. i 

Ishmael 23ushed through the crowd, and grii3ed the troubadour by 
the shoulder. 

Hector de Valnois ! ” he said, in a loud voice, “ you were once 
a man, and in those days you Avere a consummate scoundrel, the 
seducer of the innocent and simple, the betrayer of your friend. 

In those days —thirteen years ago— I wrote you a letter. I have 
been Avaiting for the ansAver ever since. I am Avaiting still. In 
that letter I threatened to strike you in the oj^en street if Ave tAvo met I 
before I was sure of my revenge. I would strike you to-night, here 


AJV ISIIMAELITE. 


311 


I — spurn you like a dog, disgrace you before your fellow-men— if you 

I were in your right senses. But I would almost as soon strike a 

woman as a drunken driveller like you. For to-night you are safe ; 
but unless you are a coward lower than common cowards, you will 
j send me an answer to my letter to moiTow morning. You know my 
name. I live in the Place Eoyale.” 

“Bravo, Monsieur Carmagnole, d la lanterne with your foe!” 
cried tliQ chorus round the j^oet. 

i Ishmael had held that wasted figure in a firm gri23 as he spoke, 

! his fingers clutching the collar of the doublet. He loosed his hold 

I suddenly, turned on his heel and walked away, the crowd partini? 

I before him. 

; The poet broke into a peal of shrill laughter, chuckled and 
I crowed, rolled over in very exuberance of hysterical mirth, and 
tumbled backward into the fountain, amidst a chorus of laughter 
from the crowd. 

“ C’est ^loatant,” said one. 

“On se tord,” cried another ; while a good Samaritan, dressed 
1 like the old Provencal Bluebeard, with ferocious azure mustaches, 
j i^ulled the poet out of the marble basin. 

He looked round at them wildly, shivering in every limb. 

“Ishmael!” he muttered, “Ishmael! Tlie man whose life I 
saved on the fourth of December. So much for gratitude ! I’ll go 
home. My coach, gentlemen, my coach, as Oj^helia says in Shake- 
sjDeare’s play. Tieck and Schlegel is the best translation ; not de 
I Vigny, not even Charles Hugo. There is no good French Hamlet. 

My coach, gentlemen. But where is my friend the little 2)oet — 
!!r Baudelaire in miniature — Musset pour rire — Eonsard, Voiture, the 
little Vicomte de Pontchartrain ? ” 

His voice rose shrill above the crowd, as he crossed the lawn 
if. toward the oi 3 en windows of the great rose-garlanded salon, where 
!r the dance was dying away slowly, softly, in itsdast languid circles, 
to the waltz in Gounod’s “Faust.” Two of those last dancers, 
Eonsard and a Grecian sibyl, heard that drunken call from the 
if. threshold. To one it was a sound full of alarm. 

“Pardon me,” said the vicomte, letting fall his partner’s hand, 
and leaving the white-robed sibyl alone in the sea of dancers, de- 
'' serted, desolate as Ariadne at Naxos, “I must go to my friend.” 

And then, having darted across the room to the ojDen window at 
which Valnois stood shivering in his wet black raiment, ashy i)ale, 

’<■ the very ghost of pleasure and revelry, Pontchartrain caught ^him 
roughly by the arm, and exclaimed — 

“ In Heaven’s name, come away ! What do you mean by making 
a spectacle of yourself ? ” 

“ Only remembering the days that are gone. Will you take me 
to my den in your carriage, or shall I go straight to Sainte-Amie ? 
I am fitter for the hosjiital than anywhere else — except my grave.” 

They went out together. It was a hurried exit, which gave no 
opportunity for any adieu to Hortense. She had gone back to her 
mother, who was sitting on a divan in the vestibule among a little 
cluster of chaperons, ^jowdered a la PomxDadour, gorgeous in bro- 


312 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


cade and diamonds, or with high curling heads ^ la Maintenon, j 
yawning behind their fans, desperately weary. For the middle- j 
aged, the end of such mirth is heaviness. | 

Mme. Jarze sent some one in quest of the Columbine, who was | 
one of the last dancers in this last waltz, but who answered the 
maternal summons reluctantly. ^ 

“It is the last ball of the season, mamma,” she said discon- ! 
tentedly ; “you need not hurry us away.” 

“Hurry!” echoed HoHense, chagrined at Apollo’s desertion, 

“ why, we have made ourselves a spectacle by stopping after all the 
best people have gone. Even Madame Clavaroche has disappeared, 
and I believe the baron went to bed ages ago.” 

“ Poor baron, how pleasant it must have been to him to see peoi:)le 
laughing at his wife,” said Keratry. 

“ That is the great advantage of a masked ball,” replied Amelie, 

“ one can laugh at one’s best friends with every appearance of inno- 
cence. When we come to the baroness’ afternoon causerie next 
week we shall all be serious, and we shall tell her that she looked 
lovely as la belle Helene.” 


CHAPTEE XXXVIII. 

“daekness for light, and light for darkness.” 

Ishmael walked home in the calm morning air, through the 
silent sleeping city, where the only signs of life were in the region 
of the great central markets, on the quays, and on the bridges, 
across which the great wagons were slowly creeping, laden with the 
produce of distant fields and gardens, farms and orchards. To him 
this aspect of newly awakened Paris was of all her aspects the most 
familiar. He loved the quiet of her streets in the clear morning 
light. He had walked from barrier to barrier, across all the width 
of the city, on many a summer morning, when his mind was full of 
some new scheme, and he had to fight his way through the mechani- 
cal difficulties of the work, to strike out new paths, to overcome 
obstacles that had barred the progress of liis predecessors in the 
same kind of work. 

To-day it was not of some great combination of stone and iron 
that he had to think — the thoughts that agitated him were of his 
own life and his own destiny, and interwoven with that life and 
destiny the fate of the woman he adored. Life and love smiled 
uiion him all in a moment, after long years of shadow and gloom. 
All things were well with him, save this new peril which had come 
upon him like a thunderclap in the midst of his delight — the peril 
of bloodshed, the chance of slaying his old enemy, or being slain by 
him. For years he had waited for this chance, had courted the op- 
portunity, had held himself cheated, in so much as his own honor 
and his wife’s sin remained unavenged. And now the hour of 
vengeance had struck — and it seemed to him an evil hour. 


AN J SUM AF: LITE. 


313 


Conld^ he recoil from the chance when it offered ? He remem- 
bered his challenge to the seducer, the pencilled scrawl thrust into 
the frame of the looking-glass. Was this challenge to prove but an 
idle threat, because of the passage of time ? There are wounds that 
time can heal, wrongs that time can lessen ; but not such a wound 
or such a wrong as this. 

Yet what a work had time done since the hour of Paquerette’s 
flight. Time, the 'avenger : what a wreck had time made of his 
enemy ! That haggard ashen face with its hollow^ eyes and hollow 
cheeks haunted him like the face of the very dead. It was like an 
awful caricatime— a ghastly Wiertz picture— of the man he had 
known years ago— the poet, the jester, a little faded by a life of late 
hours and intellectual labor, full of joyousness and keen zest for 
pleasure. Now wdiat a wreck ! what a pale shadow of that brilliant 
youth ! Ishmael’s heart sunk as he pictured the meeting with that 
ruin of a man. Sword in hand, foot to foot with a spectre ! Could 
they two meet on equal terms ? 

He stayed at home all the morning, waiting for a message from 
his foe. It would be late perhaps before the drunken jester of last 
night would be sober enough to think and to remember. But wdien 
thought and memory came. Hector de Valnois w^ould surely answer 
as a gentleman should answer — even a gentleman in ruins. 

The morning seemed passing weary to Ishmael, as he paced up 
and down his study, w^aiting for a message from his foe, and pining 
to be on his way to the villa in the Bois de Boulogne, a privileged 
guest. His papers lay untouched upon his desk. He could neither 
wmk nor read. He could think of nothing but the agitating scenes 
of last night. In one moment his thoughts w'ere of Constance and 
a blissful future ; in the next he was haunted by the vision of 
Priquerette’s jDale face, the sliij) in mid-ocean, the lonely death. 

At last the expected messenger came, in the person of Armand de 
Keratry, with whom Ishmael was tolerably intimate, from frequent 
meetings at the Jarzes and at other haunts of idle youth. 

‘ ‘ I have spent the last two hours with your old friend — and your 
old foe, monsieur,” he said; “and I am charged by him to offer 
you satisfaction for all past wu’ongs. He wull meet you when you 
like, where you like, will give you the choice of w^eapons. He ac- 
knowdedges some deep wrong done you iu the past — the nature of 
v/hich he has not communicated to me. I can only say that the 
wu-ong must be indeed foul and unpardonable, if it can justify your 
thirst for revenge in your own mind and in the sight of your fellow- 
man— to say nothing of the eye of Heaven, which I suppose we may 
dismiss as an idle superstition.” 

“It is no superstition in my mind. Monsieur de Keratry,” an- 
sw^ered Ishmael. “The wrong done to me by Hector de Valnois 
was the deadliest wrong one man can do another— a WTong that 
justifies me in demanding that man’s life, although he once saved 
mine. There are some injuries that can only be w’ashed out with 
blood. I have w'aited for years for this atonement, the atonement 
is doubly due now— due to the dead, to the victim of that villain’s 
treachery. Why should I hold my hand to-day ? ” 


314 


AN miMAELITE. 


“ Because to meet that man with sword or pistol in hand would 
be nothing less than murder. Do you think that wreck of manhood, 
that mere shadow of a man, can meet you upon equal terms ? Do 
you think that shaking hand, made tremulous by the slow poison 
of absinthe, can have the faintest chance with sword or pistol against 
your nerves of steel and muscles of iron ? Can the dead stand uji 
against the living ? You in the pride of undamaged manhood, he 
tiie exhausted victim of an evil life of poverty, disappointment, de- 
spair. Would you call upon a ghost to atone for the wrongs done 
by a living man ? I tell you, Hector de Valnois is no better than a 
ghost. If you meet him, the duel Avill be suicide on his part, on 
yours murder.” 

“ Did he tell you to appeal to my compassion ? ” 

“ No ; a thousand times no. The spirit of manhood is not ex- 
tinct, even after years of poverty, absinthe, degradation. He told 
me to come to you and arrange a speedy meeting — this afternoon 
if you like, an hour before sunset, in a quiet hollow beyond Vin- 
cennes. He described the spot to me — not too remote, yet secluded 
and safe. No, he has no wish to avoid a meeting ; he has an ar- 
dent desire to facilitate one ; the feverish haste of a man to throw 
away a life that has long seemed worthless. But there is such a 
thing as compunction even on the part of the deadliest foe ; and I 
tell you that to meet this man would be murder, a crime that would 
weigh heavy on your conscience, a sin that would haunt you to your 
dying day. The man is nothing to me, remember — a chance acquaint- 
ance who has been useful to me in literature, and whom I have paid 
for his work. I plead to you as man to man, more in your own in- 
terest than in his.” 

“My own interest, my own inclination, alike prompt me to hear 
you,” answered Ishmaol, gravely. “ If I cannot meet him on equal 
terms, I cannot meet him at all. After what I saw last night — well, 
yes ; you are right. How could that shaking hand hold a sword 
against mine, which has grappled with a young lion in Algeria ? 
You are right. I must not meet him, although I cannot forgive 
him. If I alone had been the sufferer, pardon might be possible ; 
but there is one dead — dead broken-hearted — whom he wronged 
worse than he wronged me. Her injuries can never be purged, ex- 
cept by the fire that burns away all sin. Tell Hector de Valnois 
that I decline his offer of satisfaction. It conies too late. Neither 
his blood nor mine can bring back the dead, or undo the past. Tell 
him for the life he saved on the fourth of December I give him his 
own ; and that so far, life for life, -we are quits. Let him forget that ho 
and I ever knew each other. Let him forget his victim : if he can.” 

And, then, after a moment or so of hesitation, he added hurriedly, 
taking some notes from his deslc, and handing them to Armand. 

“ You tell me he is in straitened circumstances. I shall be grate- 
ful to you if you will relieve him — as though from your own purse. 
He gave me his bed once, and dressed my wounds. I thought him 
a good Samaritan in those days.” 

Armand de Keratry took the little parcel of bank-notes without a 
word. 


AN mUMAELITE, 


315 


“I expected no less from you,” he said. “ I know that you are 
a brave man as well as a good man ; and no brave man would meet 
a foe upon unequal terms.” 

They shook hands, and parted ; and Ishmael felt as if a terrible 
: burden was lifted off his mind by the result of this interview. To 

slay or to be slain : neither a jDleasant contingency for a man who 
has just won the crowning grace of a prosperous career — the love of 
the woman he adores. It was two o’clock in the afternoon. He had 
not taken any rest since the previous day. How long ago it seemed 
now ! What a deep ravine had yawned asunder in the level monotony 
of daily life, dividing yesterday from to-day ! He threw himself 
into an easy-chair, and slept for an hour or more from sheer exhaus- 
tion ; then dressed, and drove to the villa in the Bois— that luxurious 
- home whose threshold he had not crossed since the June afternoon 
> when he avowed his intention never to marry. And now he entered 
^ the hall with a firm, free step, as the affianced of the mistress of the 
■ house. 

; The dogs came out and fawned upon him in friendly welcome 
* before the servant could announce him. “ Did she send them ? ” he 

f * wondered. He was a man to whom animals came as by an instinct, 
sure in advance of his good will. Lion, the colley, put his nose into 
the visitor’s hand, and went into the salon with him ; while Bijou 
walked composedly by his side, looking up at him with serious 
black eyes, as if she had been expecting him for ages. And in the 
sunny window, with a little w'orld of greensward, fountain, and roses 
outside, Constance was waiting for him with sweetest welcome. 

And now began for Ishmael the halcyon days of his life — a time 
I of sweet communion with the chosen among all womankind ; of 
I growing intimacy with a nobler nature than it had been his lot to 
( know until now. It was the absolute fulfilment of his youthful 
i dream — a loftier soul than his own, stooping from higher spheres to 
j bear him company on earth. What bliss to be understood as he had 
never been understood before — to find j^erfect sympathy, 23erfect 
. comi^rehension — to have his ambition no longer regarded as the 
‘ commonplace contractor’s greed of gain, but understood from a 
loftier standpoint, as the* engineer’s glory in great achievements, in 
difficulties vanquished, rough ways made smooth. 

They had so much to talk about in the j^resent and the future, 
that it is scarcely strange if he told her but little of the past — since, 
to have gone back uj^on the story of those early days would have 
been to go too near the darkest passages of his life. He told her of 
his wild free life in Brittany ; of his scanty stock of learning ac- 
quired from good Father Bressant ; of the circumstances that had 
driven him from his home, touching but lightly on his father’s in- 
justice, his step-mother’s ill-will ; of his marriage he said nothing, 
beyond that first confession that the breaking of an old tie had left 
him free. Constance had drawn her own inferences, and had made 
up her mind that some sad story was involved in this old tie ; and 
for her part she so gloried and rejoiced in his love, she was so proud 
of having w^on for her lover a man of a different stamp from all the 
other men she had ever encountered — the ideal man, in a word, the 


316 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


worker, the victor, the man who had faced the difficulties and over- 
come them, and whose wealth of knowledge in all things was only 
less than his modest appreciation of his own acquirements— she was 
so proud of her lover that it never entered into her mind to be curi- 
ous about the details of his life. She was delighted to listen when 
she could win him to talk of himself, but she never questioned him. 
Her faith in him was boundless. 

And so the summer days wore on, and the season waned, and all 
the gorgeous-winged butterflies of Parisian society had flown south- 
ward to bluer skies, to game and dance and flirt and gossip and 
dress and paint beside the tideless Mediterranean, only transferring 
Parisian habits, Parisian extravagances, Parisian luxurious living to 
the towns scattered along the Eiviera. The Parisian was gone out 
of Paris, and only tlie trampling of tourists, American, English, 
Belgian, German, populated the boulevards and kept up the clink 
of glasses, the crowd of idlers at the little tables on the pavement, 
in the sultry heat of July afternoons. 

Constance and her lover cared nothing for the departure of these 
children of fashion and folly. They only waited till certain legal 
2)reliminaries should be arranged, settlements drawn, communica- 
tions made with the lady’s kindred, and so on. Lord Kilrush wrote 
to exju’ess his gratification at his daughter’s engagement to so worthy 
a suitor as Monsieur Ishmael, whose rejrutation was Eurojrean, and 
at the same time conveyed his regret at being under a medical 
regime which forbade his leaving Hombourg, even for a few days, 
and thus prevented his presence at the marriage ceremony. 


CHAPTEK XXXIX. 

THOU DOST DWELL AMONG SCOEPIONS. 

It was the eve of Ishmael’s wedding-day, the eve of a sultry day 
at the beginning of August. 

The heat had been oppressive, even amidst the murmuring boughs 
of the Chamirs ElysSes and that fair wood beyond ; and with even- 
ing the air grew heavier, as with the presage of a thunder-storm ; 
whereupon all the inhabitants of western Paris who knew how to 
live drifted toward the wood and the cascade, to eat ices and smoke 
cigarettes betwixt starshine and lamplight, to flirt, or gossip to a 
l^ianissimo accompaniment of rushing waters and waving leaves. 

The train of carriages, with their colored lamps, looked like an 
army of glowworms creeping along the leafy avenues under the 
shades of night. Not a Jehu in all Pans but" had his fare on this 
August evening. The heat of those dazzling cafes on the boulevards 
was insupportable ; theatres were suggestive of the Black Hole of 
Calcutta ; and even the stranger, to whom the Parisian boulevards 
are a wonder and a delight, pined for fresher air and an escape from 
the glare and the din. 

But if the summer night was sultry and stifling on the boule- 


AN I8HMAELITE. 


ol < 

yards and in the Palais Royal, what was it in the slums and low 
neighborhoods which hang on the skirts of Paris like a foul fringe 
upon an imperial robe ? There were slums and loathsome spots still 
left even in the heart of this splendid Haussmannized city ; and if 
there were ashes and blackness within the core of the golden apple, 
how much the more might such evil things be looked for outside, 
remote from the dwellings of those who wear purple and tine linen. 

Far from the roll of carriage wheels, the tramp of thoroughbred 
horses, the glitter of palaces, and bloom of palace gardens, is a sordid 
external zone of filth and poverty, and famine and fever, a world 
that knew not imperial Caesar, save as a name ; a name which might 
mean anything, but which certainly did not mean food and clothing 
aiivl decent shelter. 

Among these regions of outermost darkness in the far north of 
Paris, near Olichy — a region as little known to the ordinary Parisian 
visitor as the North Pole itself — there is a small settlement, given 
over for the most to the rag-picking fraternity, and known as tlie 
Cite du Soleil. 

It is not to the beauty of its situation, nor to the dazzle of gilded 
domes and pinnacles that this City of the Sun owes its name, nor has 
it been so christened in irony. The simple reason that the place has 
been so called is that the waste ground about those wretched hovels 
has been planted, time out of mind, with sunflowers, which thrive 
amidst the surrounding squalor, and encircle the dwellings of the 
outcast with an aureole. 

Rich in all loathsome odors, black with the grime of ages, this 
City of the Sun surpasses all the other settlements of the surround- 
ing plain in squalor and hideousness. Where all are vile this ranks 
as vilest. The narrow alleys which separate the huts where the rag- 
pickers sleep on their rags, are mere muddy channels, in which chil- 
dren, dogs, and swine crawl and grovel, fighting with each other 
for the bones, the stale cabbage-stumps, the putrid lobster-shells, 
which fall from the rag-pickers’ baskets. The fronts of the rotten 
old hovels are decorated with skeletons of cats, skulls of dogs,- foxes’ 
brushes. The sickening stench of the place overpowers the x^asser- 
by at ten yards’ distance. 

The road near which lies this colony of dirt and poverty is called 
the Route de la Rcvolfce. The very name is sinister, but the actu- 
ality is even more terrible a long dreary road which goes from 
Neuilly to Sfc. Denis, muddy in winter, dusty in summer, a road 
which xherces a world given over to squalor and disrex^ute — nay, 
too often made notorious by some dark history of crime — a region 
of waste places and dilapidated buildings, the comfortless shelter 
of mountebanks and beggars, scavengers, Israelitish merchants in 
broken glass and rabbit skins, chair-menders— a region in whose 
pestiferous alleys and above whose stagnant gutters hang the germs 
of typhoid and typhus, the seeds t)f phthisis, the taint of cholera 
morbus. Only the acclimatized can exist in that polluted atmos- 
X^here. 

On this August night not a breath of air stirred in the City of the 
Sun, where the sunflowers were just unfolding their golden rays. 


318 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


A hot and heavy mist brooded over the dilapidated roofs and rickety ij 
chimneys ; over the pigs, lazier than their wont, as they S 2 :)rawled in 
the sultry eventide ; the children ; the gaunt, lean curs, lowest i 

specimens of the dog family, and seemingly a i^eculiar breed of ' * 
mongrel, engendered of j)overty and dirt. 

It was between eight and nine o’clock. The mountebanks and 
beggars, the lame, the halt, and the blind, were crawling home, 
shuffling off their various infirmities as they came along. The sickly i 
children, ill enough in all conscience with the chronic disease of ; 

2 )overty, yet simulating other maladies ; the widows wlio never had 
liusbands ; the orphans wliose fathers are w^aiting at home to beat i 

them ; the men with organs, with monkeys, and with j)erforming j 

dogs ; these, jocund some of them, weary all, are creej)ing back to j 
their nests, while tlie rag-joickers are going out. In an hour the 
City of the Sun will be almost deserted by the i^i’ofession by which - 
it is 2 :»articularly affected. But there are some few dw^ellers in those 
evil-dw’elling dens w ho are not of the brotherhood of the basket and 
lantern, and these are the more dangerous inhabitants of the place. 
From these the City of the Sun derives its second name of the Little 
Mazas, so called because its occu^jants have either just come from 
jnlson or are just going there. 

In one of the hovels, a den in a dark corner, furthest from the 
highw’ay, a womhn lay on a w’retched i^allet, gazing at the weaning 
liglit, drawing her breath heavily, as if each resi^iration w’ere a labor 
and a jDain. An old crone, bent, withered, wuinkled, crouched be- 
side the hearth, upon wliich an iron ^lot simmered and bubbled 
above a handful of embers. The entire furniture of the room con- 
sisted of the jiallet-bed, two broken chairs, an old egg-box which 
did duty for a table, and a heap of rags in a corner, wiiich served 
the crone for a bed. 

Tlie v'eman had been languishing in that wretched den for weeks, 
w^asting in the deadly grij) of pulmonary disease. There had been 
days on wfflich she rallied and w^as able to crawl about in the sun- 
shine, seized now and again with that terrible cough of hers, obliged 
to hold on to some dilaj^idated railing or door-230st, wdiile she was 
shaken by the convulsive violence of a coughing fit wdiich almost 
meant suffocation. There had been days on which she had crept 
into Paris, and had crawded as far as the Boulevard Montmartre, and 
looked wdth her wan ghost-face at the crowffl and the movement of 
the city ; only to go back to her hovel, exhausted by the exertion, 
and to all appearance having discounted the brief remnant of her 
days by that imprudent waste of power. 

The crone yonder had urged this dying grandchild of hers to apply 
for free quarters at the hospital. There she would be tended and 
fed and doctored ; there she could have all she needed. Here she 
could have very little : a cup of wretched souj? made of bones from 
the basket ; a crust of diy bread fi’om the same foul source. Money 
the crone had none, she protested ; in actual truth every farthing 
she earned was spent for drink. She had been a drunkard seventeen 
years ago in the Eue Sombreuil, when that wasted form upop the 
pallet was young and fair. She was a drunkard now — a j^atron of 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


310 


the local assommoir, a consumer of that vile brandy whose fiery 
flavor has won for it the name of “ vitriol ” or casse-poitrine, in the 
slang of the unlucky wretches who drink it. 

Yes, that pallid, haggard face was the face of Paquerette. Those 
faded eyes gazing wearily at the setting sun, seen through the open 
door— a fiery shield, at the end of a long vista of huts and pigsties, 
sheds and broken railings — those pale, sad eyes were the eyes that 
were once as lovely as the eyes of the Greuze in the Louvre*^ ; inno- 
cent, childlike eyes, looking up at Ishmael with the tender trustful- 
ness of a child. They had seen the world since those days, poor 
faded eyes ! They had looked on strange x^cople and strange cities ; 
they had confronted the glare of the footlights, the bronzed faces of 
men of many nations, the fumes of drink and tobacco. Yes, she 
had seen the world, xroor little Paquerette ; she had led a life of 
change and adventure with her Bohemian lover. She had been rich 
and x^oor, haxq^y and miserable. She had feasted and she had 
starved, had alternated between fine clothes and rags, had shared the 
UX5S and downs of a clever, unsciTipulous man who lived by his 
wits ; and finally there had come an end. Hector de Valnois’ for- 
tunes had taken the downward slope. His health had declined with 
the decline of his prosx3erity. He became irritable, hypochondriac, 
a maidyr to neuralgia, a man most difficult to live with. 

In Valparaiso, where Paquerette was earning money as a singer at 
a French cafe-concert, he was seized with nostalgia, sickened for 
Paris, felt that in no other place could his strength revive, nowhere 
else could the freshness and vigor of his brain be restored. He had 
lost the power to write x^rose or poetry. It was this diabolical coun- 
try which burned up his brain with its feverish atmosx^here, its hot 
winds and seething mists. Nor could he write in exile. He wanted 
contact with his fellow^-men. This is why his faculty as poet, as 
journalist, as novelist, playwright, critic, had been declining for the 
last ten years. He made ux? his mind one wakeful night — tormented 
by heat and mosquitoes — that he would sail for France by the next 
vessel that left the port. 

“ You will meet Ishmael, and he will kill you,” gasped Paque- 
rette, white with fear at the very thought of her husband’s vengeance. 
“ He swore that he would kill you ; I heard him.” 

“ That was ten years ago. Do you sux3pose he has not got over 
the loss of you by this time ? ” asked Hector, with a sneer. 

It was in" vain that Paquerette xfieaded. The next French steamer 
took them back to Marseilles ; and from Marseilles they travelled to 
Paris, without an hour’s avoidable delay. They arrived in the great 
city almost x:>enniless, but Hector de Valnois was x^ast master of the 
mysteries of Parisian life — from the palace to the gutter. He found 
a cheap lodging in the labyiinth of narrow streets near the Luxem- 
bourg ; and here Paquerette and he existed for nearly three years, 
she accexited as his wife by the few who crossed the threshold of his 
shabby home. 

Here De Valnois did journeyman’s w’ork for his old publishers, 
for the Figaro, for the Coi'saire, working under a nom de plume, 
ashamed that the Parisian world should know the author of “Mes 


320 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


Niiits Blanches ” had sunk to the scribbler of stray paragraphs and 
the puffer of wealthy advertisers. He kept aloof from all who had 
known him in his butterfly stage, his brief day of splendor and sue- ^ 
cess. He rarely rose till noon, rarely went out of doors till nightfall. 
He dined at some popular restaurant in the students’ quarter, after 
everyone else’s dinner was over. He was always later than ^ other 
people. He was the last to leave the billiard room or the cafe ; the 
last to send in his copy to the newspaper from which he drew the 
pittance upon which he lived. 

Paquerette earned no money in Paris. She did not even try to 
get an engagement at theatre or concert. First she had a morbid 
dread of being seen by her husband ; secondly her voice began to 
fail her soon after her return to Paris. She had caught a severe 
cold on the steamer on board which she and Hector travelled as 
second-class passengers. Her health declined ; her beauty faded ; 
the bird-like soprano voice grew thin and feeble. The Paquerette 
of the past was dead. The white Easter daisy had faded for ever. 

Poverty is but a sour soil for the fragile floweret called love. 
These two had been faithful to each other through changing for- 
tunes. They had been brave and hopeful, so long as in the evil hour 
there was a chance of change for the better. But they had sunk 
now into the level monotony of hopeless poverty ; and that condition 
of things is trying to the temper, especially to a man’s temper. One 
day Hector disgraced his manhood eternally by telling his faithful 
companion that she was a burden to him, a clog, an incubus ; that 
his fatal passion for her had blighted his prospects, ruined his life ; 
that but for her he would have been the successor of Alfred de Mus- 
set, a favorite guest at Fontainebleau and Compihgne, a member of 
the Academy, a rich man. It was a burst of spleen, of wounded 
pride ; the bitter sense of failure ; the proud man’s rage at the suc- 
cess of his inferiors. It was a sudden gust of all evil feelings con- 
centrated in one angry speech. It was the passion of a moment, 
the savage outburst of a fallen angel stung by gadflies. It had no 
real significance ; but it broke Paquerette’s heart. 

She answered not a word. She stood before him, white as death, 
and as motionless. She stood and watched him, as he flung on his 
hat and dashed out of the room. It was on the edge of night, and 
he was going to his favorite haunt in the Place de la Sorbonne, Le 
Picrate, famous for its absinthe. When he was gone she went to 
her bedroom, and put a few things together in an old shawl, which 
she pinned into a little package, with tremulous hands. Then she 
put on her msty little black-lace bonnet, tied her black veil tightly 
across her hollow cheeks, and went out into the street, leaving the 
key with the portress as she went by. 

“ You can tell monsieur I am not coming back any more,” she 
said. 

The woman stared at her, not taking in the full meaning of her 
words. She spoke too quietly to mean anything tragic. 

She meant just what she said ; never to go back to him any more. 
She was leaving him forever — the man for whom she had sacrificed 
husband, home, good name, and all the best and brightest years 


A2i ISHMAELITEi 


321 


of her life. She was running away ; just as she had run away from 
the Rue Somhreuil fifteen years ago, to escape her grandmother’s 
ill-treatment. Poor little Paquerette ! her only notion of self-defence 
was to run away. 

Fifteen years ago she had fled from the Rue Somhreuil. To-night 
she went back there — winding like the hunted hare to her form, and 
nearly as hard sped as the hunted hare. In all Paris she knew of 
no friend to whom she could safely appeal in her dire necessity, ex- 
cept those first friends of hers who had looked with compassion 
upon her miserable girlhood. Of Lisette Moque, that fast friend of 
later days, the friend who had encouraged her in her folly, she 
thought with a shudder, for to Lisette’s fatal influence she traced 
her own fall. The experience that should have guided her steps in 
the midst of danger, the worldly knowledge which should have 
saved her, had only been used to her disadvantage. No. Had she 
been starving and shelterless in the streets of Paris, she would not 
now have accepted shelter and food from Mine. Moque. 

It was a long walk from the Luxembourg to the Rue Sombreuil, 
for limbs that had lost much of their youthful elasticity ; and there 
was only disappointment at the end of the journey. The old portress 
was in her dusky den by the doorway ; the court-yard and staircase 
looked exactly as they had looked fifteen years ago, only so much 
the more squalid ; so much the darker, uglier, drearier by the pas- 
sage of those fifteen years. 

“ The Benoits are gone,” said the hag, staring hard at Paquerette’s 
closely veiled face, “oh, but gone for ages. The little mam’selle, 
she that was jolie a croquer, she married a baker from Rouen seven 
years ago, and they went to Rouen to live soon after their marriage ; 
and then the big mam’selle, la grande Lisbeth, married an English- 
man, and she and the cousin, Mam’selle Toinette, went to London,” 

All this had hapj^ened ages ago. 

Paquerette leaned against the greasy door-post, trembling and 
faint. How much she had hoped for — succor, consolation, Christian 
charity — here where she found nothing. Gone to Rouen, gone to 
London — those old friends. To her the case seemed as hoj^eless as 
if they had gone to Siberia. How could she follow them — she who 
had only a few francs in her shabby little purse ; she who turned 
cold and faint and weak at the slightest mental distress? 

‘ ‘ Have you heard anything lately of a woman who once lived in 
those rooms ? ” she asked jjresently, pointing to those old casements 
on the ground floor, which were a little cleaner than they had been 
in Mm-e Lenioine’s time, and which were ornamented with a few 
tufts of primroses and cowslips, growing in old blacking bottles. 
“ But of course she is dead ! She must have been dead for years.” 

“ Mere Lemoine is not dead, madame ; Mere Lemoine is as much 
alive as the emperor — more so, perhaps ; for j)eople say that the em- 
peror has a malady which will kill him, and that he is beginning to 
fail ah-eady ; while Mere Lemoine seems as if she should never die. 
It is a healthy occupation, that of a rag-picker, to be out all night in 
the cool air, when the streets are empty and the town is quiet.” 

“ She is living then ? — and a rag-i^icker ! Poor soul ! ” 

21 


322 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


“ Well, it is not a pleasant trade; but they seem to thrive upon it. 
Mere Lemoine must be eighty years of age. She came into this 
yard within the last month. She knows that she can get a taste of 
brandy once in a way for the sake of old times. She is bent nearly 
double, withered, and wrinkled — Dieu de Dieu, how withered, how 
wrinkled ! But she is alive, and as hale and hearty as you or I.” 

She was still living, then, that old, old woman, the grandmother 
who had beaten her and scolded her, and driven her as a fugitive 
from that very house ; and now the time had come when Paquerette’s 
last hope of a refuge was from the charity of that very grandmother. 
The v'hirligig of time had brought about its own revenges. There 
was nothing for her save this or the hospital. And she was not ill 
enough to ask State charity. If she had been, she might have pre- 
ferred the hospital. 

“Do you know where Mere Lemoine lives ? ” she asked. 

“ She lives in a place where a great many of the rag-pickers live.” 

“ In the Eue Sainte Marguerite ? ” 

“No, no; ever so much further off than the Eue Sainte Mar- 
guerite. She lives up by Clichy, on the Eoute de la ESvolte, in a 
place called the Cite du Soleil — a place given over to rag-pickers.” 

“The Cite du Soleil,” repeated Paquerette, faintly; for she was 
very tired after her walk ; “I suj^pose I shall be able to find the 
place?” 

“ Why not ? You have a tongue in your head,” answered the 
woman, carelessly ; for Paquerette did not look a person likely to 
pay for politeness. “You have to find your w’ay to Clichy, and then 
any one will show you the Cite du Soleil.” 

Paquerette thanked her, and left the Eue Sombreuil forever. She 
walked some distance in the direction of Clichy, and then, almost 
ready to drop, she found there was an omnibus which would carry 
her for a considerable stage of the journey for a few sous. This 
helped hei’, and in the spring night, between eight and nine o’clock, 
she aiTived at the City of the Sun — just when the rag-pickers were 
issuing from their hovels, a little procession of old men and women, 
each with a lantern swinging at the end of a stick — a train of glow- 
worms in the spring night. 

Paquerette put up her veil, and stood by the roadside to watch 
them go by. The stars were shining in the April sky, the night was 
soft and gray rather than dark. Everyone turned to look at that 
figure^ standing by the wayside with a white wan face evidently 
watching for something or someone. The rag-pickers went by 
slowly, moving stiffly, halting in their walk like old horses after an 
interval of repose. Some of them mumbled and muttered as they 
hobbled along, as if chewing the cud of better days. Paquerette 
gazed piteously at those old wrinkled faces, at the women most of 
all, looking for her grandmother. Almost at the tail of the dismal 
procession came a hag more bent and decrepit than any other ex- 
ample of age and misery presented by that squalid companv. Her 
head nodded, her chin worked convulsively as she tottered along, 
mouthing, muttering. Her lantern shook like a light on a ship at 
sea, her skinny hand trembled as it clutched her staff. She, too, in- 


AIS^ I8HMAELITE. 


823 


quisitive even in her semi-imbecility, turned and peered with dim 
bleared eyeballs at the figure by the wayside. 

Something in the crone’s nut-cracker countenance was familiar to 
those sad eyes looking out of the pale face. 

“ Grandmother ! ” faltered Paquerette, faintly. 

The crone started, and then came close to her, staring at her, de- 
vouring her, with wild, haggard eyes. 

“ Jeanneton ! ” she screamed. “ It is my daughter’s ghost ! ” 

“No, grandmother ; it is youi* daughter’s daughter : broken- 
hearted like her mother ; wretched and poor and friendless, like her 
mother. You see it runs in the family.” 

“ Why, then, it is Paquerette ! ” cried the hag, “ that shameless 
rag of a granddaughter ; the child I reared out of charity, and who 
deserted me in my old age.” 

She planted her staff upon the dusty ground, and stood leaning 
upon it, gazing at Paquerette, while the squalid regiment of rag- 
pickers moved onward, and the twinkling lights melted and vanished 
in the gray eventide. 

“ I did wrong, grandmother ; but you were too hard ui)on me. 
Y’'ou beat me because I refused to marry a man I hated.” 

“ To hate such a man ! Oh, the folly of these girls ! ” cried the 
hag ; “a man who had saved money ; a man whose wife is a lady. 
I have seen her. Do you hear, child ? I have seen the charabia’s 
wife. She was a servant at a wine-shop in the Rue de la Roquette 
_:_a brazen wench. He married her a year after you ran away. Ah, 
but she lives well ; she has a warm nest. She is one of the fattest 
women in the Faubourg St. Antoine. She goes to the theatre twice 
a week. She wears a silk gowai on Sundays. Ah, you were a fool, 
Paquerette — a fool. Just like your mother. All young women are 
fools.” 

“ Yes, grandmother, I have been a fool ; but not for refusing to 
marry the charabia ; not even for running away from you. I have 
been'a fool, and my folly has left me without a friend, or a roof to 
cover me. Can you give me shelter till I can look about, and do 
something to earn my living ? ” 

“ Shelter— but— yes ; I have a home, a snug little home, and you 
shall share it. Folks shall not have to say that I refused shelter- 
even to a runaway granddaughter. Your mother ran away, and she 
came back— back to the old nest. And you, you too have come 
back. Strange, vei-y strange,” muttered the old woman, prattling 
on in a senile fashion, as she led the way to the City of the Sun. 

The City of the Sun ! In all Pitquerette’s varied experience she 
had never beheld anything so hideous as that collection of hovels 
and pigsties and dust-heaps, all grouped together hap-hazard, hu- 
man and porcine habitations nestling side by side, dust-heaps piled 
against the w-alls, on a level with bedroom window^s. The house in 
tlie Reu de Sombreuil was an abode of luxury, a bourgeoise and cos- 
sue habitation as compared with these dilapidated shanties of worm- 
eaten wood or crumbling plaster. A pane of glass here and there in 
a window was the rare exception that proved the : nile of broken 
casements stuffed with brown paper, rags, old hats, and rotten straw. 


<324 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


The chief endeavor of the inhabitants seemed to be not to let the 
light in at their windows, but to keep the weather out. Thus an old 
boot, or a saucepan lid was deemed an appropriate substitute for a 
broken pane. 

And the odors ; the fetid stream of animal corruption ; the rank 
taint of rotten vegetables ; the sickly, indescribable stench, wdiich 
combined all imaginable foulness in one loathsome essence — from 
these Piiquerette recoiled, shuddering ; but the grandmother’s skinny 
lingers giiped her shawl, and drew her on. 

“ I have a snug little home at the end here, in a nice, sheltered 
corner,” she muttered, chuckling and gibbering as she went along. 
“I haven’t paid any rent for six months. They are a rough lot 
about me, and the collector got frightened the last time he came to 
our end of the place, and has never ventui’ed so far since. There 
are some queer fellows live next to me — Italians ; very quick with 
their knives ; and they threatened to stab that line gentleman when 
he came prying about with a leather money-bag across his chest and 
a little bottle of ink in his waistcoat pocket. He has never been 
near me since.” 

She led the W’ay to the Ultima Thule of the City of the Sun, a hut 
more dilapidated than any they had passed yet ; for the roof was 
half off, and the rotting rafters were covered with an old mattress 
and a piece of tarpaulin. There was not a j^ane of glass left in the 
old leaden casement ; there w’as not an inch of unbroken plaster on 
the walls ; and the floor was the primitive earth. In one corner there 
W'as a huge heap of rags ; in another a smaller pile of broken glass 
and old metal ; in the middle of the floor a collection of more valu- 
able debris — bones, relics of stale fish, crusts, cabbage stumps. 
These w^ere intended to furnish Mere Lemoine’s larder. On one side 
of the bare hearth there was an old iron pot, which formed the hag’s 
entire batterie de cuisine ; on the other stood a bent and battered 
brazen candlestick, holding a couple of inches of tallow candle, 
which the old woman lighted at the flame of her lantern. 

HoiTor-stricken at the aspect of this den, Piiquerette recoiled on 
the very threshold. Surely it would be better to sleep under the 
open sky, to lie in a ditch, than to inhabit such a hole as this. But 
she remembered that in Paris it needs a long education in pauper- 
ism to be able to sleep out of doors, so keen are the authorities upon 
the amateur vagi’ant. She had heard Hector de Valnois describe the 

shifts of his Bohemian acquaintance — the rgfractaires of society 

their life-long duel with the sergents-de-ville. And at this very mo- 
ment her limbs were sinking under her wuth faintness and fatigue. 
Her feet would have refused to carry her a hundred yards further. 
She was sorely changed from the light-footed slip of a girl, who had 
fled like a lapwing from the Bastile to M6nilmontant fifteen years 
ago. Fifteen years ! Ah ! what a weary time, and what a dreary 
change those years had brought ! 

“ There,” cried the hag triumphantly, pointing to the wretched 
pallet. “ There is a nice, comfortable bed, where you can take your 
ease of a night tvdiile I am toiling for a living. IfVou want a crust, 
you will find plenty there,” nodding toward the heap of nameless 


cljsr ISmfAELlTE. 


325 


debris ; “ and a savoiy bone into the bargain. I must be off, or I 
shall lose my chances on the Boulevard Poissonniere : that’s my 
beat. There are some rare bits to be picked up at the restaurants 
along there ; and there would be much better pickings, only the Lit- 
tle Sisters of the Poor get the best of everything, taking the bread 
out of our mouths. If ”— here she hesitated, as before making a 
stupendous sacrifice — “ if you want anything to drink, there’s a taste 
of casse-poitrine left in the bottle there.” 

“Brandy, do you mean ?” faltered Paquerette. “Yes, I should 
like a little drop ; I feel faint and sick.” 

The old woman looked at her doubtfully, with a disappointed air, 
as of one who had expected her offer to be refused. She went over 
to the heaps of rags, and groped for a bottle that she had hidden 
under the unsavory pile. She brought it out with a reluctant air, 
and held it up against the flame of the candle. 

“ There’s not much more than a taste,” she said ; “ we’ll share it.” 

To be certain of fair play, she drank her own half first, out of the 
bottle, which she handed afterward to her granddaughter. 

Paquerette returned it untouched. The idea of that heap of foul 
rags revolted her. She could not taste anything kept in such a hid- 
ing-place. 

“ A little water, please,” she faltered. 

Alas ! water in that human kennel was less attainable than brandy. 
There was a rickety cask in front of a hovel three or four doors off 
which received the drippings of rain-water from the rotten roofs 
above, and this was the only supply to which Mere Lenioine ever 
resorted. Although loath to delay her setting forth any further, 
the old woman took a cracked mug from the mantel-shelf and hob- 
bled off to fetch some water. She came back with the mug full of a 
blackish fluid, which Paquerette drank greedily, with fever-parched 
lips, only discovering its imtrid taint after she had drunk. 

She sank down upon the wretched pallet, just as she must have 
sunk upon the bare ground outside, if there had been no such couch. 
Her strength was exhausted, her course was run. Loathsome as 
the den was she had no x)ower to leave it for a better shelter. Had 
a comfortable home been waiting for her a quarter of a mile off, she 
could not have crawled so far. 

This was the beginning of long days and nights of pain and ^^en- 
ance. If Paquerette had known intervals of remorse and suffering 
before, those transient periods of sorrow were as light as thistle- 
dowm compared with the weight of anguish which oppressed her 
soul as she lay hour after hour in the solitude of her kennel — always 
alone ; for the witch-like figure of the old grandmother squatting 
beside her heap of rags, sorting and sei^arating her grimy stock-in- 
trade with still grimier fingers, muttering and nodding the while 
over her work — such companionship as this could hardly be called 
society. And when the rags w^ere sorted in the chill morning hour, 
the crust mumbled, the bone gnawed, the hag drained her measure 
of casse-poitrine and rolled herself in a corner among her rags to 
sleep through the summer day. Sorry company at best. 

And then the melancholy nights, when the hag was gone forth on 


826 


AN I8HMAEL1TE. 


her filthy quest in the gutters of the great city ; ancl when the dying 
woman lay broad awake, gazing at the clouds sailing past in the 
far-off sky, or the summer stars shining in that fair infinite of which 
she knew so little. She liad taken away the rubbish that had choked 
the casement, so as to get all the air she could in her den. When 
the old woman grumbled at the open window Paquerette contrived 
a temporary screen with her shawl and the rush seat of an old chair, 
that had long parted with its legs ; but all night while Mere Le- 
moine was away, she had the casement open to the weather, even 
albeit the night was stormy, and the wind and the rain beat in upon 
her bed. It was air she wanted most of all, air for that laboring 
chest, that weary heart. Ah, what long hours of agony, of retro- 
spection, of bitter memories ! How full of sadness were the visions 
of her head upon her bed in those silent summer nights ! silent save 
for a gust of evil speech, the noise of distant brawlers borne by upon 
the wind. What heart-rending thoughts of the might have been ! 
What keen regret for the things which were ! 

It was not of her seducer that she thought most in those sad night- 
watches — not of him for whom she had surrendered home and good 
name. It was upon the image of the wronged husband that her 
mind dwelt ; it was upon all that life might have been had she 
honored her marriage vow. It was of that lost destiny siie thought. 
She knew now the worth of the man she had deserted ; knew his 
value by contrast with the man for whose sake she had deserted him. 
She knew that she had fiuug away the fine gold and taken to herself 
the dross. She had ])een very faithful to that bond of dishonor. 
Thus far, at least, she had been superior to the herd of fallen 
women. She had sinned once, and forever ; she had accepted the 
penalty of her sin. She had never tried to lessen her burden. She 
had borne with her lover’s fitful temper, slaved for him, obeyed him, 
cherished him, with sublime self-abnegation, only to be toid at last 
that she had blighted his life ! 

Her downward career had been full of trouble and weariness, but 
she had clung to her comrade in misfortune ; all the more faithful 
because the road they trod together was rough and thorny. And at 
the end of all he flung her constancy in her face, told her that she 
had been a clog upon his actions, the cause of all his failures. That 
last insult had broken her heart. And now in these long and lonely 
days, uncheered by friendship, unsustained by religion, amidst 
foulest surroundings, in pain and penury, Priquerette’s memory 
went back to her married life, to the peaceful, gracious home she 
had abandoned, and to the husband who had been all goodness and 
all indulgence for her, and whose only fault had been to work over- 
hard for the future which they two were to share together. Ah, what 
a happy life it seemed, her life on that second floor at M^nilmontant, 
looked back upon from her den in the City of the Sun ! She had 
not known a care in those days. Her nest had been soft and warm, 
her purse well filled. And now, alas ! the story of the prodigal son 
was recalled to her, as she thought that Ishmael’s dog had better 
fare than the mouldy crusts or the rancid broth which was offered to 
her dry lips by the grandmother’s charity. 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


827 


And for her there was no possibility of return. She could not go 
back like the prodigal son, and confess her sorrow for her sin. Her 
sin was of a kind which sets an everlasting barrier between the sin- 
ner and the offended one. God would forgive her, perhaps. Her 
Creator and her Judge would accept this long penance in sackcloth 
and ashe% : but Ishmael could not pardon. For what motive had 
she sinned against him? For a fancy ; for a dream ; for the impulse 
of an idle mind. Looked back upon now in her misery, that sin 
seemed as motiveless as it had proved fatal. 

Memory travelled back to even earlier days ; to that joyous holiday 
under green leaves, that midsummer day in the woods of Marly. 
She had loved Ishmael then, looking up at him as to a being of 
superior mould, adoring him with innocent girlish worship, as pure 
of soul in her dingy ground-floor den as the most high-bred damsel 
in the Faubourg Saint-Germain, just emerged from conventual 
seclusion. The snow-drop in the workman’s window unfolds itself 
from its green sheaf as fair a blossom as the tuberose in a duchess’s 
conseiwatory. The taint and the grime come later to the oj^en 
flower. Yes, P^querette had been pure in those days, and had given 
Ishmael a holy and an innocent love. And fate had smiled upon her 
as it smiles on few of her class ; and she had won a good and true 
man for her husband. And then came a life too free from care ; 
days too easy ; idleness that corrupts the soul ; and for a frivolous 
fancy she gave her life to shame and dishonor. 

She had leisure enough in which to trace the progress of her folly 
as she lay staring up at the sky, her only prospect, or watching the 
green tops of the sunflowers grow taller as the days went by, only 
token of the passage of time, except the racking cough and the sharp 
pain in her side, which grew a little worse every day. And, oh, the 
bitterness of those keen regrets, the dull agony of remorseful 
memories which travelled again and again over the same ground ! 
Only the sinner who has lost all because of one irreparable act, knows 
the shaiqmess of such a repentance. 

In those long blank days Paquerette’s fine ear grew accustomed 
to every sound in the City of the Sun ; unmelodious, harsh, discord- 
ant sounds for the most part, which were a pain to that delicate 
sense of hearing ; the grunting of pigs ; the shrill yells and evil 
language of that gutter-brood, sprawling and squabbling in the sun- 
shine and the dirt, cliildren only a little higher than the animals 
they played with and fought with ; the yelping of dogs ; the crow- 
ing" and cackling of a ragged regiment of fowls ; the grating sound 
of a hurdygurdy, the treble piping of a tin-whistle ; the still harsher 
sounds of human quari’elling, which seemed always at a pitch of acri- 
mony that touched the edge of murder. 

There were two or three itinerant musicians among the dwellers 
in the sunflower city ; and of these the best known to Paquerette 
were a pair of Italian organ-grinders who inhabited the den next to 
M^re Lemoine’s dwelling. The rotten partitions were so thin that 
Paquerette could hear every tone of their voices— nay, could some- 
times hear their veiy words, though she was rarely able to under- 
stand more than a sentence here and there. This was not because 


328 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


they spoke Italian— for in the course of her southern wanderings 
Paquerette had learned a good deal of Italian, and a little Spanish, 
but because they for the most part spoke in a Neapolitan patois, 
curiously interlarded with the newest Parisian slang. 

Sometimes, of a summer evening, after Mere Lemoine had gone 
out with her basket and her lantern, the two Italians would rest 
themselves after their labors on a bench in front of their den, smok- 
ing and talking in the twilight, while their macaroni was simmering 
on the hearth inside, sending forth savory odors of cheese and garlic. 
And at these times Paquerette could hear every word they said. 
Unseen as they were, they were her only companions. She became 
interested in them from the very desolation of her lonely life. They 
were two human voices near her. She envied them each other’s 
company. They seemed to be kind to each other, brotherly. It was 
pleasanter to hear them than the grunting of pigs, the howl of a 
half-starved cur. Their Italian voices had a low rich sound as of 
music. Little by little her keen intelligence got to understand their 
iratois, and she could follow almost every word they said. 

They were keen politicians, talked much of France and of Italy, 
of secret societies, and of one great society which was to bind to- 
gether the working classes all over the civilized world — a brother- 
hood before which kings and crowns were to go down, and palaces 
to crumble or be turned into Phalansteries. They talked of the 
Carbonari ; of Orsini, and his attempt upon the life of the emi^eror ; 
and how Napoleon visited him in his cell at Mazas upon the eve of 
his execution, and swore to liberate Italy from the yoke. 

“ It was well for him that he kept his i^i'omise,” said the elder 
brother ; ‘ ‘ for there are forty of the Carbonari who took a solemn 
oath to slay him if he delayed the redemption of the pledges he gave 
in his youth. But now he is with us. He, who a few years ago 
condemned a handful of students for holding a political meeting, now 
encourages the Liternationale with heart and hand.” 

“ Every tradesman must go with the times,” answered the other, 
with sardonic air — “the man who trades in kingdoms and sceptres 
most of all.” 

“And now the emperor is going to help working-men to insure 
their lives, to leave something after death for the wife and little 
ones, and to make a fund against accident or illness. The State is to' 
find part of the money. The Avorkman is to pay his modicum.” 

The other laughed aloud at this ideal of prudence and economy. 

“ Hoav many of those model Avorkmen are there, do you think, 
who care Avliat becomes of their brood Avhen they are lying in their 
gratis trench ? If they have any si:)are cash it goes to the assommoir, 
or the bastringue. What Ave Avant is soraetliing more than to be 
helped to save our OAAm money. We want to bring down masters to 
the leA^el of their men ; we AAnnt a fair division of profits, instead of 
staiwation Avages. What Ave want is co-operative labor ; co-opera- 
tion betAveen Avorkmen Avhich should put an end to the patron ; co- 
operation between the Avorkman and the State Avhich should do 
away with the middleman. We want to see the last of those harpies, 
the army-conti-actors, for examine, Avho SAveat their gold out of the 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


320 


brows of their journeymen. Let the government give out their 
materials to a syndicate of workmen, who will return the finished 
articles at the bare cost of the labor employed upon them. No in- 
termediary between the country that pays and the laborer who 
works. But, no ; the government would rather encourage the slave- 
dealer, the man who grinds the faces of the poor. I say that no 
man has the right to grow rich by another man’s labor ; and the 
great capitalist who employs a thousand laborers is as vile a cheat 
as the padrone you and I have had to deal with, who grows rich out 
of half a hundred barrel-organs and as many white slaves to grind 
them.” 

“ I know of such a one,” growled the other ; “ a man who used to 
dine at a seven-sous ordinaire sixteen years ago. I have sat beside 
him many a time. He was a laborer, a mason’s drudge in those 
days. And now he is a great man ; builds bridges, viaducts, rail- 
ways, and is one of the millionaires of Paris. This Monsieur Isli- 
mael used to be a voice among the Beds ; he was a great man among 
us in the old days, when we were called the Society de la Loque, and 
used to meet in a back room at Vilette ; but he has changed his tune 
since he has grown rich. They all change from the day they can 
manage to scrape together two or three thousand francs.” 

“ Grace a Dieu, I have never let myself be corrupted by saving 
money,” said the easy-tempered younger brother; “ wdien I have 
two or three sous I change them for a glass of petrole, which warms 
blood and brain, instead of cooling them, as money does.” 

“ I have known the want of money heat a man’s blood to fever- 
point, to murder,” said Gavot, the elder. 

“ True,” replied the younger, with a lazy yawn. “But so long 
as I have a handful of macaroni in the pot, and a shelter from the 
storm, I can make myself hapjjy.” 

“ I am not of your temper. I hate poverty ; and I hate rich men. 
Ishmael has been a marked man for the last three years. Let him 
beware. The Prolos do not forgive renegades.” 

This was the first time Paquerette heard her husband’s.name men- 
tioned by the Neapolitans. After this she took a still keener interest 
in their conversation, and was always listening for that one name, 
or for any allusion to Ishmael. She heard them speak of him on 
several occasions, heard them talk of his successes, his wealth, with 
just the same keen envy that she had heard expressed by Hector de 
Valnois many .a time upon the same subject. For that hatred which 
the loser feels for the winner in the race of life is a common weak- 
ness of poor humanity, exemplified on a large scale, say, by the ha- 
tred which Prussia felt for France from the day of her defeat at Jena 
to the day of her revenge at Sedan ; and on a lower level, by the de- 
testation of an insolvent baker for his prosperous rival in the same 
street. 

Hector de Yalnois, gentleman, poet, sybarite, had hated the self- 
made man for his victory over fortune ; and from the lips of this 
organ-grinder, who had known Ishmael in his early struggles, Pa- 
querette heard the same droppings of venomed speech. 

One night the two brothers — they who were for the most part so 


330 


AN ISIIMAELITE. 


brotherly — quarrelled in their cups. Paquerette heard them, and 
shuddered, discovering for the first time how terrible the wrath of 
these southern natures can be. They seemed to be on the point of 
hilling each other. She heard them stmggle, guessed from their 
speech that knives were brandished, and that blood was shed. She 
held her breath, expecting every moment to hear the death-groan. 
But the noise of the scuffle grew fainter, and died into silence. And 
next morning the two men went out with their organs, singing gayly, 
fast friends and good brothers. 

And now, in the lurid August sunset, they were sitting outside 
her door, smoking their x>ipes and talking of Ishmael ; talking in 
low and muttered tones, so that Paquerette could only catch a word 
here and there. 

This had gone on for some time, and then Guvot, the man who 
claimed bid acquaintance with Ishmael, raised his voice, and said in 
an angry tone : 

“ He refused me fifty francs — he — on the eve of his wedding with 
a wealthy Englishwoman, a marriage that will double his fortune, 
they say — refused fifty francs to an old acquaintance — a brother of 
the Societe de la Loque. There was a day when, if I had denounced 
him as a member of that secret society, he would have been sent to 
Cayenne — as those others were, after the coup d’etat. If I were to 
denounce him now it might be the worse for him — renegade — turn- 
coat as he is. He refused me a handful of francs — refused helj:) to 
an old fellow-workman ; referred me to some benevolent society he 
has founded. I know them, these benevolent societies. They are 
invented to ask questions and pry into a poor man’s affairs, rather 
than to give him a dinner or a bed And he is to be married to- 
morrow to an English lady — line jeiine Mees Lady Constance quelqiie- 
chose ; a grand marriage at the church of St. Philippe du Boule. Per- 
haps he may have more guests at his wedding than he has counted 
upon.” 

He was to be married to-morrow. Paquerette covered her face 
with her wasted hands, and the tears flowed fast between the trans- 
parent fingers. 

“ He might have waited till I was quite dead ; it would not have 
been long,” she said to herself. “And yet, what difference can it 
make ? I have been dead to him for years ! ” 

They went on talking out there in the red angry glow of the sink- 
ing sun. Paquerette heard the drone of their voices, now loud, now 
low, but sbe listened no more to their words. She lay with her eyes 
shut, thinking of Ishmael. He was to be married to-morrow to a 
grand English lady — a woman worthy of his love. And she, Paque- 
rette, would be blotted forever out of his life. Did he believe that 
she was dead, she wondered. Yes ; it must be so. He was too 
honorable to marry if he thought she were living. Some one must 
have deceived him; some one must have told him she was dead. 

“ It can make very little difference, since I shall be dead so soon ! ” 
she thought. She had never hoped to be forgiven by him, never 
hoped to see him again. She had thought of him for years as of one 
who must needs scorn and loathe her. And yet it was almost as 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


331 


great a pain to know that lie was to be married to another as if they 
two had clasped hands only yesterday, and the bond of love were 
but newly snapped asunder. She could think of nothing but of this 
marriage. She tried to picture the face of the bride ; but she could 
only call up a vague image of a handsome countenance, cold and 
cruel, looking uiDon her with infinite scorn. And then she pictured 
Ishmael kneeling at that cold, proud woman’s feet, adoring her, 
happy with her. And it seemed as if she, Puquerette, had never 
truly lost him until now. 

Gradually, imperceptibly, while summer darkness descended upon 
the City of the Sun, the waking picture changed to the fever-visions 
of a troubled sleep. Pdquerette was standing in a church, such a 
church as waking eye has never seen — so vast, so strange, so devil- 
ish in its hues of vivid carmine and glittering gold, like the flames 
of Pandemonium. And in slow procession toward the high altar 
came Ishmael and his bride, the English beauty, clad in white vel- 
vet and diamonds, like the empress on her wedding-day ; and for 
the bridal company followed all the rag-pickers of Paris, with their 
loaded baskets and their swinging lanterns, two and two, a fantastic 
train. The stench of the baskets, the smoke of the lanterns, stifled 
Paquerette. She woke with a sense of suffocation — woke to hear 
loud and angry voices in the adjacent den, and to feel rather than to 
know that she had slept long, and that it was the dead of the night. 

They were not fighting this time. Those voices were raised in 
angry denunciation of some one or of something ; hoarse, thickened 
by strong drink, confused, almost unintelligible ; but there was 
no quarrel. There was a third voice, which spoke in Parisian French 
interlarded with the slang which custom had made familiar to Pa- 
querette from her childhood. She had known the slang of work- 
men and grisettes, of actresses and singers, of journalists and poets, 
and painters and freethinkers and socialists. And the man who 
was talking to the two Neapolitans in the adjoining shed spoke that 
language of which she had heard most of late, the figurative speech 
of the students’ quarter, a vocabulary full of subtle allusions, al- 
most every word charged with a history. The voice, too, had a fa- 
miliar sound, but her weary brain could not recall where she had 
heard it. 

The Italians had been drinking, ^nd were half mad with drink. 
The elder Gavot vowed vengeance upon an old enemy. The French- 
man pretended to deprecate his wrath, obviously egging him on all 
the time. Paquerette crept across the floor, and seated herself close 
to the partition. Sbe sat with her ear against the rotten planks. 
The wood served as a conductor of sound. She could hear every 
syllable. Gavot’s talk Avas incoherent, diffuse, rambling; the 
stranger’s words were every one to the purpose. lie came back al- 
ways to the same point. He, in his own person, bore no grudge 
against this man Ishmael. But as a Prolo, as a member of that 
older Society of the Loque, as one of the great brotherhood of hu- 
manity, he revolted against the tyranny of capital, against a man 
who, after absorbing the labor and the brains of other men, with the 
octopus arms of a hundred audacious speculations, could refuse fifty 


332 


AN I8HMAELITE, 


francs to his fellow-man, his companion of the past. Gavot told that 
story of the fifty francs again and again over his cups ; he beat it out 
like redhot iron upon the anvil, and at every repetition the fiery 
sparks flew faster ; until the man had maddened himself almost as 
much by his own words as by the liquid fire from the nearest wine- 
shop. 

The talk lasted long, with infinite reiteration, accompanied at brief 
intervals by the chink of glasses, and the sound of liquor being 
poured from a bottle. 

And at last, when the cold dawn, with its look of unearthly 
brightness, was staring in at the open window, Paquerette, pale as a 
spectre in that livid light, sat with wide open eyes, listening to Ga- 
vot’s vow of vengeance on the traitor to the cause of Socialism. 

He would be there at the church door, with his knife. There was 
a deed to be done as worthy as the slaughter of Caesar, as heroic as 
the assassination of Marat ; a deed that should make France ring 
with the name of the doer. 

‘ ‘ I was one of the forty Carbonari who swore to kill Napoleon the 
Third, if he broke faith with the liberators of Italy,” said Gavot. 
“ There were princes and nobles among them ; but there were men 
of the people also, and I 'was one of those. I W’ould have killed the 
Emperor had he turned renegade. Where Orsini failed I should 
have succeeded, for I would have been bolder. And I will stab this 
renegade to-morrow at the church door.” 


CHAPTEK XL. 

“and a stokmy wind shall eend it.” 

It was Ishmael’s w'edding morning, the morning which w^as to 
begin a new and glorious life, a life gloiified by such a love as men 
dream of in the fervor and faith of youth’s imaginings, but which 
few are so blessed as to realize in after-life. Ishmael was one of 
those chosen few. His childhood had been spent in neglect and dis- 
honor ; his loveless boyhood had been embittered by a step-mother’s 
jealousy ; the cup of disappointment had been given him to drink in 
his early manhood ; his married^life had brought him only evil and 
shame in return for patient kindness and honest affection upon his 
part ; but now, when the race for wealth had been run victoriously, 
when honor and renown had been acquired as the crowning grace of 
fortune — now, in the prime and vigor of his manhood, he was to 
realize that dream of bliss which every true man cherishes — the 
vision of union with a loftier soul than his own, of being able to 
pour out the treasures of his love at the feet of a woman who,, for 
him at least, should be half a goddess. 

Overpowered, bewildered almost by his supreme content, he paced 
his study in the Place Eoyale in the 'fresh summer morning, the soft 
south wind blowing in upon him from the grave old square, with 
its blossoming limes and its kingly statue, solemn, tranquil, remote 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


333 


from the stir and tumult of the great city. He had been at work 
at yonder desk for the greater part of the night. His lamps had not 
been extinguished till sunrise, and then he had only lain down for 
t^yo or three hours’ sleep, before rising again for his cold bath and 
his toilet. A coffee-pot and a light breakfast of rolls stood on a 
table by the open window. The big office table was covered with 
l^apers, classiffed, arranged, to be ready for his secretary and his 
clerks during his absence. He was to start that evening upon a 
long honeymoon ; first to Pen-Hoel, to show his wife the cradle of 
his race; then all through Brittany ; and afterward to the. south of 
Ireland. He wanted to see that fair and fertile land in which Con- 
stance’s childhood and girlhood had been spent, a province as 
romantic and unique as his own rustic Brittany. They two had 
planned that honeymoon holiday stage by stage. Each was to show 
the other the haunts of childhood and youth. It would bring them 
even nearer together, strengthen just a little the perfect bond of 
sympathy, to tread the old pathway side by side, to recall for each 
other the beginning of either life. 

On their return to Paris,. Lady Constance’s villa in the Bois de 
Boulogne was to be their wedded home, while the good old house 
in the Place Eoyale was to remain Ishmael’s office. His working 
life was to be in nowise altered by his marriage. He was still to 
be one of the master-spirits of an age of progress. Viaducts, rail- 
ways, roads, canals, were to be continued as if no revolution had 
changed the life of the engineer. Constance had never sought to 
beguile her lover into the sybarite’s empty existence, to transform 
the worker into the man of society. “ You will give me as much of 
your company as you can, Sebastian,” she said ; “and I promise not 
to be jealous of your work.” 

“ My dearest, tlie happiest of my days will be with you, and the 
hour that you tell me you are tired of a workingman for a husband, 
I will begin to wind up my business life, so as to be your slave, and 
yours only.” 

“ I shall not do that until I feel that you have come to the time 
of life when a man should rest from his labors,” she answered, 
gravely : “ when the grinding of the great wheel should cease, and 
a man may sit by his hearth and say, ‘My work is done.’ I can 
look forward with content and hopefulness now to old age, Sebastian, 
for it will be the holiday of our wedded lives. And before I knew 
you I used to think of my declining years with a shudder, as a time 
of loneliness and regret.” 

After this they talked of that far-off future, the day of repose from 
life’s conflict and labor ; and planned how they would live some- 
times in the old house at Pen-Hoel, which was to be imiu’oved into 
the very perfection of a rustic manor-house ; sometimes in a dower 
house on the banks of the Shannon, which Constance had iriheiited 
from her mother. Some part of every year was to be spent in Paris, 
for neither Constance nor Ishmael could conceive the possibility of 
an old age in which contact with their fellow-men could cease to be 
a necessity of their lives. They had planned everything in those 
fond forecastings of wedded life which lovers delight in. Their 


334 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


days and years were laid out as a garden — a garden in which there 
should be" neither weed nor thorn, thistle nor bramble of temper, 
jealousy, ill-will, or discontent; only the fairest flowers of love and 
mutual bliss. 

And now Ishmael walked slowly up and down, and in and out of 
the suite of spacious rooms on the first floor in the fine old panelled 
house, built in the days of the second Bourbon king, and mused 
upon the life he was leaving, the life upon which he was entering. 
The life which was to end to-day had been a desolate life. Bich in 
fortune, in success, in honor, but barren of domestic joys, passing 
poor in love. These old walls had looked, with their sombre color- 
ing of years long gone, uj)on lonely hours, days and nights given to 
dryest work ; and only once in a way had they beheld a social gather- 
ing, a bachelor’s dinner of four or flvn earnest men, all workers like 
the host. For nine years, ever since the beginning of his wealth, 
Ishmael had occuiDied that first floor in the Place Koyale. The 
quiet old square with its shadowy trees, the sober old-panelled 
rooms, had taken his fancy. It was just such a sombre and retired 
home for which his wounded heart languished. He took to himself 
a clever old housekeeper, a woman who for seven-and-twenty years 
had kei:)t house for one of the greatest savants of France — a woman 
who knew how to respect an isolated studious life, and how to pro- 
vide for the comfort of a master who had no idea of caring for him- 
self. With such a servant Ishmael’s domestic life had gone upon 
velvet ; but if it had been without trouble, it had also been a stranger 
to joy. 

As he looked round the rooms to-day in the light of his new hap- 
piness, he wondered how he could have endured that loneliness so 
long. A life without domestic love. Ah ! how long the days and 
nights seemed to look back upon : monotonous days and evenings 
in which there had been no variety, but the variety of labor and 
care. Those dark panels had reflected his lamps night after night, 
till the edge of morning, and liad seen him bending over the same 
desk, on the wide table spread with maps and plans, and estimates 
and calculations of quantities, in the same attitude, hour after hour. 
The adjoining room across which he paced this morning, needing 
all the space possible for the expansion of his glad thoughts, was 
his salon and dining-room in one. He had furnished it with the 
solid old rosewood bureau, the massive chairs and tables from his 
old home at Menilmontant, even the black marble clock with the 
bronze sphinxes which had sounded so many weary hours for 
Pdquerette’s impatient fancy, eager for pleasure and excitement, in 
a city where the fever of dissii)ation seemed in the very air men 
breathed. There were the old things, ^Avidly recalling the old life 
on the threshold of the new. There, in a recess by the fireplace, 
stood Paquerette’s piano. Poor little piano ! In his anguish and 
rage at his wife’s dishonor, Ishmael’s first impulse had been to 
smash the thing, to break it up for firewood, burn it to ashes. But, 
with his ax uplifted for the work of destruction, he had relented. 
The strings vibrated with a mournful sound as he waved his hatchet 
in the air, a minor wail like a cry of despair. It was as if it were a 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


335 


living tiling he was about to slay — a roe caught in the thicket. No ; 
he could not hurt the poor little piano. He kept it by his fireside, 
though to look at it was always pain, so vividly did it recall 
Paquerette. And many a time between midnight and early morn- 
ing he had risen, wearied, half-blinded by poring over figures and 
l)lans, and had seated himself at this little piano to pick out old 
tunes, simple melodies by Gretry or Mozart, with his clumsy, un- 
educated fingers. 

The old piano, part of his domestic sorrow, was to be undisturbed 
by his new joy. Lady Constance had looked at it curiously on her 
first and only visit to her lover’s home. She had driven there with 
Amelie Jarze one afternoon, to see what a house in the Place Eoyale 
was like. At least, that was the motive put forward when she pro- 
loosed the visit to Ishmael, though perhaps the real desire was to see 
the background of her lover’s daily life. 

The piano caught her eye before slie had been two minutes in the 
room. 

“ What, you play then ? ” she exclaimed. 

“ So badly that it is hardly to be called playing,” he answered, 
reddening a little. 

“ Yet well enough to have a piano in your room.” 

“It is a relief to me sometimes to stumble through an old 
melody, when I am very tired of dry-as-dust work.” 

“ I am sure you play well, and I am enchanted at the idea,” cried 
Constance. “ Do play something for me.” 

Ishmael declined the honor, smiling at her eagerness. 

‘ ‘ Either of your footmen would play as well as I. ” 

“ And yet you— a serious business man, a famous engineer — have 
a piano in your salon ! ” 

“ Why not ? The piano was a fancy of mine. Is a working man 
to have no fancies ? ” 

“Your piano has such a veiy feminine look,” said Amelie, full 
of curiosity. “And here is an old music-book,” she said, standing 
by the piano and twirling over a volume ; “an opera of Gretry’s, 
with some of the soprano songs scribbled all over with a master’s 
instructions. Your sister’s book, no doubt ? ” 

“ No, mademoiselle ; I never had a sister. That book belonged 
to a person who was no relation to me.” 

This was strictly true. The volume was a second-hand one, picked 
up at a bookstall by Lisette Moque, lent by her to Paquerette, who 
learned some of the songs with her old singing master, and never re- 
turned the volume to its owner. It had been moved among other 
books from the third floor at Menilmontant to the first floor in the 
Place Eoyale. 

Am61ie recurred more than once to that little incident of the piano 
and music book in her after conversations with Lady Constance 
Danetree, but she failed in kindling a'sijark of jealousy in Con- 
stance’s steadfast mind. Her love was supreme in all noble quali- 
ties, most of all in faith. 

The contract which secured to Constance the whole of her fortune, 
and gave her a magnificent settlement on the part of Sebastian de 


336 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


Caradec— otherwise Ishmael— had been executed over-night. The 
civil marriage was to be performed at eleven o’clock ; the religious 
ceremonial at twelve. Fashion among people of Constance l)ane- 
tree’s rank prescribed that the civil marriage should take place on 
one day, the religious ceremonial the day after ; but Constance cared 
nothing for fashions and conventionalities, and she and Ishmael had 
been of one mind in prefemng that both ceremonies should be per- 
formed within a couple of hours, leaving them free to hurry away 
from the tumult and glare of Paris at the earliest opportunity. 

It -was to be a very quiet marriage. Only Constance Danetree’s 
chosen friends, and three old friends and associates of the bridegroom, 
had been invited. 

Ishmael’s three friends were men of considerable distinction in 
their various callings : one a practical engineer like himself, a man 
whose inventions and improvements had increased the wealth and 
well-being of his country ; another a well-known physician ; the 
third, a savant and a man of letters. Ishmael's idea of friendship 
w’as quality rather than quantity. In his seventeen years of Parisian 
life, he had made many acquaintances ; but he could count his 
friends upon the fingers of one hand. 

At a quarter before eleven he w^as at the Maine, attended by these 
three friends of his, waiting for his bride. At five minutes before 
the hour Constance arrived, accompanied by her old friend Lady 
Valentine, wdio had known her from girlhood, and her new friends 
Hortense and Amelie Jarze, who, by sheer persistence had contrived 
to interweave themselves in the W'oof of her life. And certainly 
Amelie was no disgrace to the ceremonial. Her bright golden hair 
was set off by the daintiest little bonnet, all rosebuds and lilies of the 
valley. Her wdiite muslin frock was a flutter of lace flounces and 
palest i3ink ribbon ; her gloves and parasol were of tlie same delicate 
pink. Not an article of her toilet was paid for, nor was likely to be 
paid for within a reasonable period. But the couturiere had been 
more amiable to Lady Constance Danetree’s particular friend than 
she 'would have been to Monsieur Jarze’s inq^ecunious daughter. 
Amelie had taken her dear friend to Madame Volant’s luxurious 
rooms in the Rue de la Paix, and with a little dexterous management 
had induced her dear friend to lay out five or six thousand francs 
upon Madame Volant’s novelties ; a gown exactly like that just made 
for the Countess Walewska ; a mantle like one ordered yesterday 
for the empress. On the strength of Lady Constance’s purchases, 
Amelie had ordered her frock and bonnet for the 'W’edding ; and 
albeit she w^as to assist at the consummation of her own defeat, she 
was bent on looking her prettiest upon this }>articular morning. Mon- 
sieur de Keratry was to be at church ; and their betrothal was now’ an 
established fact. It was only a question how soon his circumstances 
would authorize marriage and if not rich, he was at least noble, 
good-looking, clever, and Amelie thought herself much better off 
than Hortense yonder, with her pale, pinched face and anxious eyes, 
and her hopeless passion for that poor little impostor, Paul de Pont- 
chartrain. 

Constance looked as shy as a girl of eighteen as she came slowly 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


337 


toward the table, behind which sat the Maire in his tri-colored 
scarf, the a^dul functionary whose sign-mannal was to make her Se- 
bastian’s wife. Her gown and bonnet of cream-colored crepe de 
chine were simplicity itself. What need of fine gowns and bonnets 
to express hai^piness ? That shone and sparkled in the lovely violet 
eyes, luminous under their long dark lashes, which drooped a little 
more than usual this morning. She gave her hand to Ishmael when 
the brief ceremony was over, and he led her out to her carriage. 

“Now I am half your wife,” she said, smiling at him. “It is 
already too late for repentance. The thing cannot be undone. Oh, 
what a stormy sky ! And I hoped the sun would smile upon our 
union.” 

“ The sunshine is in our hearts, my beloved,” he whispered. 

The storm-clouds which had been darkening the sky at intervals 
ever since yesterday’s sunset now brooded black and heavy over the 
golden dome of the Invalides, and the leaden sky made’ a sombre 
background behind the Marly Horses in the Champs Elys^es, where 
not a leaf of the blossoming limes stirred in the heavy atmosphere. 
Weather can make no difference to a man whose whole being is 
steeped in gladness, before whose eager feet the gates of Paradise 
are opening ; and yet Ishmael felt a vague sense of oppression, a 
nameless foreshadowing of evil, as his brougham drove along the 
Eue du Faubourg St. Honore, under the sxDlashing of heavy rain- 
drops. 

There was a rumble of distant thunder as he alighted hastily in 
front of the church, anxious to be ready to receive his wife, whose 
carriage followed. 

There was an awning before the church door, and a crowd under 
the awning. The usual cluster of shabbily clad idlers ; men, women, 
and children, curious about every movement in that world of the 
wealthy find high-born which was as remote from their own world 
as if it were in another planet. The crowd was rather bigger than 
it usually is on such occasions, for Ishmael had given carte blanche 
to a florist in the Eue Castiglione, and the altar was more exquisitely 
decorated than for an ordinary wedding. The carrying in of the 
flowers had been a sufficient sign of something out of the common ; 
and the crowd had been growing ever since ten o’clock. 

Islimael’s brougham had scarcely driven away, when the other 
carriages approached. He had no time to look at the faces in the 
crowd before Constance had alighted. In another moment her hand 
was through his arm, and the two were on the threshold of the 
church together. 

Before they had passed that threshold there was a sudden move- 
ment in the crowd, a shriek of fear from Constance, as a man broke 
through the throng, and sprung upon Ishmael with a dagger in his 
hand, uplifted to strike. 

Eapid, decisive as that moment was, it was not so quick as that 
of a pale, forlorn creature in the front row— a sickly face and a feeble 
figure that had been leaning for the last half-hour faint and weary, 
against the moulding of the church door, the shabbiest, wretchedest 
figure in that mixed assembly. Swift as was the hand with the 


338 


AN miMAELITE. 


dagger, the white-faced woman intercepted the blow. She flung 
herself upon Ishmael’s breast as the assassin’s arm descended ; and 
it was her shoulder that received the knife meant for his heart. 

The wound was severe, but not fatal. Paquerette lifted her wan 
eyes to her husband’s face. 

“ I have saved your life,” she murmured, faintly. “ God is very 
good to let me do it.” 

“ Paquerette ! ” 

“ You know her, then ! ” faltered Constance, clinging to him, en- 
vious of this pale, squalid creature who had saved the man she, 
Constance Danetree, loved, and would have died to shield from harm. 

“Know’ her! yes, too well, too well. Where are W’e to take her? 
What are we to do for her ? ” he asked, looking at Dr. Dureau, his 
medical friend. 

The Italian had been seized, was in the grip of the police in- 
stantly, as it seemed to the spectators. 

“ Take her to the hospital,” said Dureau, taking Paquerette in his 
arms, and looking at the ghastly face. “ That is about all you can 
do for her. The blade has pierced the pleura, if it has not touched 
her lungs. It is a bad case. Is there any surgeon in the crowed?” 

There w’as none, as it seemed ; so Dr. Dureau despatched a mes- 
senger for one of the cleverest sui’geons in Paris, who lived near at 
hand. 

“Not to the hospital,” said Ishmael, hurriedly; “to my house. 
She has saved my life.” 

“A decided obligation, if it w’as not an accident,” answered the 
j3hysician. “ But I think the hospital would be better.” 

“No, no ; to my house. You can take her there in my carriage. 
Dureau, I depend upon you to do all — all — that can be done for her. 
Loraine,” to his friend the savant, “give Lady Constance your arm 
to take her into the church. I wdll join you presently.” 

“You wdll not be long,” said Constance, deadly pale, but calm 
and collected, as it was her nature to be in a crisis. 

Her friends. Lady Valentine, Hortense, Amelie, crow’ded about her, 
suffocated her almost with their attentions. 

“ Pray let me alone ! ” she exclaimed, impatiently. “ I have not 
been stabbed.” 

She walked up the nave, between the crowded chairs, the staring, 
gaping spectators, in an atmosphere heavy wdth incense and hot- 
house flowers. She walked wdth a firm footstep, her head carried as 
23roudly as ever, but her heart beating 23assionately, full of tumult 
and fear. 

What did it all mean ? There was a mystery somew’here — a history 
of the past in which that wdiite wan creature was involved. Women 
do not fling themselves between the victim and the knife without a 
motive stronger than abstract benevolence. This w’oman had saved 
Sebastian Caradec’s life, most likely at the cost of her own. A woman 
does not do as much as that for the first comer. 

This act of to-day w’as the last link in a chain ; and it was for Ish- 
mael to enlighten her as to all the other links before they tw^o would 
kneel side by side at yonder altar. 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


339 


She was his wife already. Yes ; by the law of the land. But not 
by the sacrament of the church. She, a Eoman Catholic, counted 
that legal ceremonial as of smallest importance. In her own mind 
the union of to-day was no union tiU the Church had sanctioned and 
sanctified it. 

She seated herself a little way from the embroidered carpet upon 
which they Avere to kneel. The tapers Avere burning amidst clusters 
of AA^axen bloom, stephanotis, Cape jasmine, tuberoses. The altar 
Avas one brilliant mass of gold and flame and color. She sat there 
Avith her eyes fixed, seeing neither tapers nor flowers ; seeing only 
the woman’s livid face lying on Ishmael’s bosom. 

He of whom she thought Avas busy in assisting at the departure of 
the carriage Avith the wounded, and jjerhaps dying, Avoman. The 
surgeon had come, in answer to Dr. Bureau’s summons ; cushions 
were brought from the church and arranged in the carriage, so that 
Paquerette could be conveyed to the Place Royale in a reclining posi- 
tion. Ishmael scribbled a pencil note to his housekeeper requesting 
her to do all that the utmost care could do for the patient. The car- 
riage was to call for a nursing Sister on its way through the Marais. 
Eveiything was planned rapidly, decisively, for Paquerette’s com- 
fort. She seemed only half conscious when they laid her in the car- 
riage. Just at the last moment, Ishmael bent down and kissed her 
cold hand. 

*■ ■ I thank you, Paquerette,” he murmured, and the white lips an- 
swered with a feeble smile. 

‘ ‘ And now, ” said Dr. Bureau, when Ishmael’s carriage had driven 
off, with the surgeon seated by Paquerette’s side, and all arrange- 
ments made for her comfort, present and future, “ I think you had 
better go and perform the second act of your wedding drama.” 

“ Not to-day,” said Ishmael, “I could not; Lady Constance would 
not wish ” 

“ I think Lady Constance will wish to make as little of a scandal 
out of this business as possible,” replied his friend. “The fact that 
an Italian fanatic attempted your life, and that a beggar-woman 
saved it, is no reason .wdiy your marriage should not take place to- 
day.” 

“ But there is a reason,” said Ishmael. “There can be no mar- 
riage to-day. I must see Lady Constance alone.” 

Dr. Bureau shrugged his shoulders. 

‘ ‘ You are the hero of the play, and you must finish it in your owm 
fashion,” he said. “It was near ending in a tragedy fifteen minutes 
ago. What motiA’-e could that man have for attacking you ? ” 

“None, but his owm ill-will to one who never injured him. He 
is a member of a secret society to which I have belonged for many 
years — a socialist, a carbonaro — what you will. He came w'hining 
and begging to me the day before yesterday. They all do, these ac- 
quaintances of my poverty, though they "denounce me for having 
groAvn rich. I refused to give him money, refeiTed him to a bene- 
volent institution Avith which I am connected, and Avhich relieves the 
deserving.” 

“You say you never injured him ! And you refused him money, 


340 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


yesterday! As if that were not the deadliest injury. A Parisian 
would wu’ite a libellous paragraj)!! about you. A Neapolitan mshes 
at you with his knife.” 

Ishmael went up to the nave to the space in front of the altar 
where the wedding party was grouped, Constance seated in the 
midst, very jjale, but with a superb repose of attitude and manner, 
as if nothing extraordinary had happened. The wedding guests had 
a more fluttered air, expectant, excited. The organ was playing 
Beethoven’s “ Hallelujah Chorus ” from the “ Mount of Olives.” 
Priests and acolytes were waiting. 

“ Lady Constance, may I speak with you for a few minutes in the 
vestry ? ” asked Ishmael. 

Constance rose, and went with him toward the vestiy door. 

“It is what I have been wishing for,” she said, as they entered 
the room, which was emjDty. “ This ceremony of to-day can go no 
further till you have explained the mystery of that woman’s devo- 
tion.” 

Ishmael closed the door, and stood with his back against it, fac- 
ing Constance, deadly pale, but with no touch of the craven in his 
aspect. 

“Alas ! my beloved,” he said, “this marriage of ours can go no 
further to-day — nor for many days — perhaps never, unless you are 
very kind and pitiful to me. There is no mystery. There is only 
a terrible surprise. The woman who threw herself between me and 
that man’s dagger is my wife. She is the wife who abandoned me 
thirteen years ago, and of whose death I was assured. I had ample 
evidence. Not till I had conclusive evidence of her death did I ask 
you to marry me. That was why I held back in the first instance, 
waiting for certainty. Well, I was duped by a scoundrel, whom I 
paid for duping me. The evidence of my wife’s death which was 
given me was a fabrication. That is all. And my unha23py wife 
still lives ! ” 

There was a silence. Constance looked at him with sad, re- 
jiroachful eyes. Her lips trembled a little before she could find 
words ; and then she said falteringly : 

“ You might have told me everything. Y'ou might have trusted 
me as I trusted you.” 

“ You had no dark story in your past life — no plague-spot. I 
slirunk from talking to you of my first marriage. I was only one- 
and-twenty years of age when I married a foolish girl, low-born, 
ignorant, reared in the gutter ; a girl who might have been at least 
res 2 )ectal)le as my wife, but who chose another fate. And now at 
the last, after thirteen years, in which she has given me not one sign 
of her existence, she rises up at my feet out of the stones of Paris, 
and sacrifices her own life to save mine.” 

“So long as she lives you are bound to her. Whether it be for 
months, or for years, you owe her the devotion of your life,” said 
Constance, with intense conviction. ‘ ‘ Whatever her guilt may have 
been in the past, her sacrifice of to-day is an atonement.” 

“ How she came to be there at the moment of peril ; whether it 
was by accident, or if she knew— it is all a mystery,” said Ishmael. 


AN I8HMAELITE. 


341 


“She will explain all— if she recovers.” 

_ “ Constance— I call you by that dear name, perhaps for the last 
time— can you forgive me ? Will you believe that I am guiltless in 
this miserable entanglement ? ” 

I have always believed you,” she answered, with a queenly 
smile. ‘ ‘ And now take me back to my carriage. Let nobody sup- 
pose that we are ill friends.” 

They went back to the nave together. Ishmael explained that, 
under the agitating circumstances of this morning. Lady Constance 
and he had decided to postpone the marriage ceremony. He felt it 
his duty to look after the poor creature who had jeopardized her life 
to save him. He might also be wanted at the examination of his 
wouid-be assassin before the juge d’instruction. 

Lady Constance invited her friends to the breakfast which had 
been prepared for them ; but all had the grace to decline. Only 
Lady Valentine offered to accompany her old friend home ; but Con- 
stance owned that she would rather be alone. 

“ I shall get over the morning’s agitation better by myself,” she 
said ; and the carriage drove off with her alone, Ishmael standing 
bare-headed to watch her depart. 

And so ended his wedding-day — the day which was to have begun 
a new life. Three hours later' they two were to have been seated 
side by side in a railway carriage — a coupe specially retained yester- 
day in advance — on their way to Pen-Hoel. 

Someone touched him on the arm. It was an official, who re- 
quested him to go at once to the office of the juge d’instruction, be- 
fore whom Gavot was about to be examined. Dr. Dui’eau, and 
Ishmael’s two other friends, both witnesses of the attempt, were also 
wanted. 


CHAPTEE XLI. 

“the moening is come unto thee.” 

The Venetian shutters w^ere half closed upon the open windows 
of the old panelled room in the Place Eoyale. A sober old room, 
soberly furnished, cool and airy even in this sultry August weather. 
The faint mstle of leaves, the measured tread of occasional foot- 
steps sounded in the grave old square outside. Tranquillest corner 
of Paris, remote from the traffic and the din, meet home for poet 
and philosopher ; and oh, what a blessed change from the City of 
the Sun ! What an earthly paradise, after that hell upon earth ! 

Paquerette was lying on her soft white bed in the roomy alcove 
yonder, under finest linen, perfumed with roses and lavender, 
screened by cool draperies of soft gray damask. Paquerette was 
resting luxuriously on the last stage of a journey which had growm 
tranquil and pleasant as it drew to its close. She lay propped up 
by large white pillows, scarce whiter even in their fresh purity than 
the thin, pinched face looking out of them. Her pale, transparent 
hand toyed idly "with a large bunch of Dijon roses that lay upon the 


342 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


coverlet. There were flowers on the mantelpiece, flowers on the 
table near the bed, flowers on the window-sill — a luxury of flowers. 

A sister of the order of St. Vincent de Paul sat a little way from 
the alcove, and watched the patient, ready to minister to the small- 
est wish. She could do little more than smooth that steej) descent 
to darkness and the grave. Puquerette was dying. She had been 
dying by inches in her den in the City of the Sun, and now death 
was coming toward her with swifter footsteps — now, when she was 
at peace in that soft, sweet bed, amidst the scent of roses, with the 
afternoon light making bars of gold upon the polished oak floor, be- 
tween the Venetian shutters. Beyond those half-closed shutters, she 
saw green leaves and the blue sky. No grunting and squeaking of 
swine, no yapping of mangy curs assailed her ear ; no fetid odors 
sickened her. 

She was at peace ; her sins were confessed and forgiven. A good 
old priest fro.m Ishmael’s native village had come to her bedside, as 
fast as diligence and railway could bring him, Ishmael had tele- 
graphed for him within an hour of the scene at the church door. 
Good old Father Br.essant had knelt by her bed, had heard her fal- 
tered expression of deepest penitence, and had given her such com- 
fort as the Church can give to the remorseful sinner. 

And then he whose face she dreaded, yet loved to look upon, had 
come and sat beside her pillow, and had taken her pale wasted hand 
in his strong grasp, and had given her pardon for the bitter irrevoca- 
ble past, for tlie one mad act which had blighted two lives. Very 
tenderly had he acknowledged the love that had come between him 
and murder, and they two had prayed together, recalling the fond, 
sad memory of the child they had lost, the prayers said beside the 
little coffin, the grave on the side of the hill. 

“ Let me be buried with my baby,” she pleaded; “ if — if — other 
people have not taken the grave for their dead.” 

“ Paquerette, do you think I should forget my child’s resting- 
place ? That was the first freehold I ever bought.” 

“ And you will let me be buried there ? ” 

“The mother shall rest beside her child.” 

‘ ‘ Bless you for that promise, Ishmael. I have only one other 
prayer. The poor old grandmother — so old, so wretched, so feeble, 
leading such a miserable life ; bent, and weary, and half blind, and 
yet toiling on — will you save her from that horrible life, remove her 
from that hideous place where the rag-pickers herd together in the 
dirt, like animals ? Will you do that, Ishmael, for — ? ” She was 
going to say, “for my sake,” but she stopped herself, and faltered 
humbly, “ for the sake of what I once was to you.” 

“ The poor old grandmother shall be cared for. I would do much 
more than that for your sake, Paquerette.” And then he told her 
of the children’s home in the rich, wooded country beyond Marly-le- 
Boi. He told her of the happy colony of little ones rescued from 
the slums of Paris, from such places as the Cit^ du Soleil. He told 
her how, for her sake, he had devoted some portion of his wealth, 
and much of his time and care, to this purpose, and how the work 
had prospered. “If I can help it, by precept or example, there 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


343 


shall be no children growing up in the dark yards of Paris, neglected, 
desolate, untaught ; as you were in the days of your youth, my poor 
Paquerette.” 

“Yes; it was a miserable youth, was it not? And afterward, 
when you w'ere so good to me, when foolish people praised me, my 
head was turned. Life was all so new and strange, and I was eager 
for pleasure, for music and brightness — all the joy I had missed 
when I was a girl. And then I was base and ungrateful, and my 
wicked heart rebelled against you, and turned ” 

A flood of tears drowned her speech. She clasped her thin fingers 
over her eyes, and was silent, remembering how she had set up an 
idol of clay, a false god that had fallen and crushed her, amidst the 
ashes of a ruined life. 

The gray-robed sister had left during this conversation. She 
came back at a summons from Ishmael, and knelt by the bed, pray- 
ing, in a low gentle voice. Ishmael bent to kiss the pale brow, so 
soon to assume the awful coldness of death, and then went softly 
away, leaving only the w'omanly consoler, the voice of prayer and 
praise. 

No one in the house knew what was the link between the famous 
engineer and the dying woman ; an ening sister, perhaps, brought 
suddenly back to the fold ; or if not a near kinswoman, a close 
friend. No one guessed that it was Ishmael’s guilty wife whose 
last hours w'ere ebbing gently away. 

Two doctors — the most distinguished in Paris — were in attend- 
ance upon that death-bed. They both w^ere of opinion that the 
wnund in itself would not have been fatal. The lungs had not been 
penetrated, and the injury to the pleura might have been got over 
in a healthy patient. But Paquerette had been marked for death 
months ago. 

“ The wonder is that she could have walked from Clichy to the 
Faubourg Saint-Honore, in her state,” said the physician. “It was 
the act of a heroine. She tells me that she started soon after day- 
break, and that she was several hours on the road. She had no 
money, no alternative but to crawl every inch of the way, while every 
breath she drew was pain. It is only women who can do these things.” 

A piteous stoiw, yes ; and a story that had come to its closing 
jDage. Paquerette lived for a day and a half after she had been for- 
given, and died with Ishmael’s roses in her hands, peacefully, in the 
morning glow, like a child sinking to sleep. 

It was not till after Paquerette’s death that Ishmael tried to bring 
the trickster Dumont to book for the conspiracy which had been 
hatched against his honor and his happiness. The remorseful after- 
thoughts of many a bitter hour had told him that he had himself to 
biame for having trusted a broken-down profligate with a delicate 
mission, and for having put a price upon the evidence of his wife’s 
death. His passionate desire to be free to marry the woman he loved 
had blinded him to the folly of his act— had tempted him to lean on 
such a rotten reed as Dumont. 

He called to his aid one of the cleverest members of the Parisian 
police, and in the dusk of the evening after Paquerette’s death he 


344 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


revisited the Cite Jeanne d’Arc, in the comjjany of this man. The 
police officer was dressed in plain clothes ; but to the initiated eyes 
of the inhabitants of that colony he had the word Eaille inscribed 
in capital letters upon Ids forehead. 

They 'went straight to the house which Ishmael had visited with 
Dumont, ascended to the fourth landing, and without even the polite 
preliminary of a knock, entered the room in wdiich he had heard tlie 
dying Spaniard’s story. They found themselves in the bosom of a 
large family, seated cheerily round the pot-au-feu, the savory reek 
of which rose superior to the foul odors of the place. The inhabit- 
ants were new ; even the poor sticks of furniture were different from 
those which Ishmael had seen in the room. And yet he was sure 
that it was the same room, as he had taken careful note of the num- 
ber on the door on the previous occasion. 

The people were civil — nay, overijoweringly courteous, and evi- 
dently overawed by the presence of Ishmael’s companion. The man 
was a street -hawker, and laid considerable stress upon the honesty 
and respectability of his avocation as compared with the pursuits by 
which many of the citizens of Jeanne d’Arc contrived to make their 
living. He made a point of being thus far autobiographical before 
he could be induced to give any information about his predecessors 
in the apartment. 

The Spanish sailors ? Yes ; there had been two Spanish sailors in 
the room before he took it — just three weeks ago. 

“ One of the men died, did he not ? ” asked Ishmael. “ He was 
dying when I saw him on the second of July.” 

“ Dying ! But no ; the Spaniard was no more dying than I, Jacques 
Dubourg. He is a man who smokes opium, and spends half his 
life on shore in a state of stupefaction — worse than drunkenness, 
and yet not so bad, for he lies quiet on his grabat, and interferes 
with no one. It Tvas on the third of July that he and his comrade 
cleared out of the room. They were going back to Havre by the 
night-train. They had only been in Paris a week, and had hired 
their sticks of furniture from the guardian of the place, the porter 
at number one, who collects the rents and looks after the keys. I 
know all about it, you see, messieurs, for I and my family came in 
just an hour afterward, and the porter could only give us a room in 
the roof where the rain comes in by the pailful ; so I was on the 
watch for the chance of a better room, and as soon as the Spaniards 
cleared out we came down to the fourth floor. It is luxury after the 
hole we had above ! ” 

This was the utmost information to be obtained here. Ishmael 
acknowledged the hawker’s civility with a handsome pour-boire, 
which he dropped into the willing hand of the wife, hoping that by 
this precaution his benefaction might be spent upon something bet- 
ter than vitriol or “ little blue ; ” and then he and his companion 
went down-stairs and picked their way through the muddy channel 
to the door of number one, where they found the custodian of the 
place in an apartment which, although passing grimy, was at least 
wind and weather proof. 

From this functionary they could obtain little more information 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


345 


than had been given them by the hawker. The Spanisli sailors had 
come to the Cite in the company of a decent-looking Parisian, who 
engaged the room for them, and paid in advance for a mont]i’s rent, 
and for the hire of the little lot of furniture. One of the sailors was 
represented as an invalid, who w’anted to rest and recruit himself 
before he could go back to his ship. The porter supj)osed that they 
would occupy the apartment for at least a month. He was, there- 
fore, much surprised when they brought him the key of their room 
on the afternoon of July the third, and informed him that he could 
take back his furniture. He had not seen their Parisian friend after 
the first occasion. This was all he knew. 

The facts w’ere clear enough to the mind of Ishmael. The story 
of the wreck of the “ Loro ” was a trumped-up story, invented by 
Dumont, with the aid of the Spaniard. Or the story of the ‘ ‘ Loro 
may have been a true story, in all save Paquerette’s presence on 
board the vessel. The Spaniard, a chance acquaintance, ])erhaps, 
l^icked up at Havre, had been carefully taught the part which he 
had to i)lay in the conspiracy ; and Ishmael had been tricked into 
mistaking the symptoms of opium-poison for the signs of approach- 
ing dissolution. One fact, and one only, was not easily to be ex- 
2 -)lained. By what means had the Spaniard or Dumont obtained 
possession of the packet of letters written by Hector de Yalnois to 
Paquerette — letters which no woman would have willingly parted 
with to a stranger ? 

Here was a mystery which neither Ishmael nor the police could 
fathom, not knowing the link between the man called Dumont and 
the writer of the letters. 

The actual fact was that Dumont, alias De Valnois, finding him- 
self alone in his kinsman’s lodging, soon after he had received his 
commission from Ishmael, had ransacked Hector’s bureau in the 
hope of finding some scrap of Pilquerette’s handwriting which might 
serve him in the plot he was hatching, and had there discovered the 
packet of old love-letters, carefully put away by Paquerette herself, 
in a hiding-place at the back of other jaapers. 

On the day after Paquerette’s funeral Ishmael received a letter 
with the postmark of Limerick. It was from Constance, wdio wrote 
from the chief hotel in that city : 

“I am on my way to the dower-house at Kilrush,” she wrote. 
“ where I shall spend the coming autumn. I think it is only right 
that you should know where I am, and that you should be free from 
all anxiety iijDon my account. 

“Do your duty, Ishmael, and fear not the issue. If it jfiease 
Providence that your wife recover from the peril she incurred to 
save you, take her to your heart and home again, if it be possible, 
and let your future happiness be found in that re-union. It is im- 
j)ossible you should continue unhap23y, if you follow the dictates of 
honor and conscience. God will be with us both, near or afar, so 
long as we w'alk bravely in the straight path. 

“ Ever youi’ loyal friend, 

“ Constance Danetree.” 


346 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


So much, and no more. Enough at least to tell him that there 
was no anger against him in that noble soul. He telegraphed his 
answer within an hour. 


“ Death has broken the old tie. In three months from to-day I 
shall go to the dower-house at Kilrush, unless you forbid me.” 

Three months of mourning for the wife who had died to him 
thirteen years before ; three months of hard work, which made his 
severance from his beloved easier to bear ; three months during 
which time the Neapolitan Gavot was found guilty of an attempt to 
murder, and was condemned to travaux forces for life ; three months 
which saw the espousals of Amelie J arze with Armand de Keratry ; 
three months in which the teinturier sunk day by day a little lower 
in that awful gulf of mental decay to which the absinthe-drinker 
descends ; three months during which the semi-imbecile hag from 
the Cite du Soleil awakened suddenly from a life-long dream of dirt 
and squalor to find herself in a wonderland of cleanliness and com- 
fort, represented by the neatly furnished bedchamber of a hospital 
for old women. Here Mere Lemoine sat by the cozy little stove, and 
hugged the warmth, and gibbered and nodded in the sunshine, and 
muttered to herself about Jeanneton and Paquerette, and asked her 
caretakers piteously for a taste of petrole, vitriol, casse-poitrine — 
what you will ; and it may be she something regretted the free life 
of the City of the Sun, the lantern and the basket, and the bottle of 
fierce potato-spirit hidden under the heap of rubbish and offal in the 
middle of her den. 

It was the first week in November, the season of fallen leaves, 
low gray skies, and fox-hunting, when Ishmael went down the 
Shannon in a small steamer that plied between Tarbert and Kilnish. 
Those level shores of the noble Irish river, widening ever toward the 
sea, looked gray and mournful under the dull autumnal sky, white 
vapors creeping slowly over the fields in the eventide ; and the coast 
on which he landed in the dusk had a barren look ; but the little 
town showed more lighted windows as signs of life than a bourg in 
his native Brittany could have shown, and though there were some 
signs of decay and neglect, there were no indications of the hard, 
grinding poverty which forbids the lighted hearth, the rush candle, 
and curtails the cheery evening hour. 

The driver of a dilapidated jaunting-car took forcible possession 
of Ishmael on the instant he landed ; and in this conveyance he was 
rattled along rustic lanes, which had a friendly look in "the twilight, 
like and unlike the lanes about Pen-Hoel. He could feel the salt 
breath of the sea, and he found out afterward that he was driving 
with his face toward the Atlantic. He passed a good many tvpical 
Irish cabins, roughly built of stone, rich in broken, windows and all 
the traces of neglect. . Yet in most cases the open door showed the 
cheery heart within, the dresser with its gayly colored crockery. 
That dresser and that crockery seemed to be the national represen- 
tative of the household virtues, the penates of the Irish peasant. 


AN ISHMAELITE. 347 

Where all else was squalor and ruin, the dresser and the row of 
plates and jugs still remained; the very altar of home. 

But a sharp turn of the road carried the traveller into a new region, 
a lane in which the cottages were more numerous, better built, with 
neatly thatched roofs, steep picturesque gables, and tall, clustered 
chimney-stacks ; cottages in well-kept gardens, where late autumn 
flowers were blooming, a little oasis of beauty and domestic comfort 
in a neglected land. 

“It is her influence,” he thought. “I am drawing near her 
home.” 

He was not mistaken ; about a quarter of a mile further the car 
entered a gateway by a Gothic lodge, drove through a magnificent 
shrubbery of conifers and arbutus, and drew up in front of a low, 
long Tudor house, with a roomy stone ijorch, in which a tall beauti- 
ful woman, dressed in dark velvet, stood waiting for him, with 
two dogs, his old friend Lion, and a superb Irish setter, in attend- 
ance upon her. 

He was by her side in a moment, clasping her hands. He had 
written to her, and had heard from her more than once during the 
three months that ended to-day ; but this was their first meeting 
since they parted at the church door on that day which was to have 
made them one forever. And now the day was coming which was 
to complete that union. All arrangements had been made in ad- 
vance, and to-morrow, in the Eoman Catholic Chapel at Kilrush, 
Sebastian Caradec and Constance Danetree were to be married, in 
the presence of old Lord Kilrush, who had returned from Hombourg, 
disgusted alike with the results of the water-cure and the rouge-et- 
noir cure. For in those days there were gaming tables at Hombourg- 
on-the-Maine. 

To-night Ishmael was to rest at the priest’s house, the chief 
among those rustic dwellings which Constance Danetree’s taste and 
outlay had called into being. On the marquis’ land the signs of 
neglect and dilapidation were as common as on most other Irish es- 
tates ; but in this little corner, this happy land of two or three hun- 
dred acres, which belonged to his daughter, order, neatness, and 
prosperity reigned. 

‘ ‘ Surely I can afford to spend as much on building a cottage as 
Spricht charges for one of his gowns,” she said, when some worldly 
wise acquaintance remonstrated with her on the folly of spending 
her surplus income on the improvement of the dwellings of the poor. 

“ But they are not grateful,” complained her friend. “ I built new 
cottages for some of my people, and gave them delicious little 
kitcheners; and from that hour I have never had any peace at my 
country place. They don’t understand the kitcheners, and they come 
and howl to me every time one of those poor little stoves goes 
wrong. Improvement is a mistake with those people. Let them 
grub on their own way, and give them plenty of wine and brandy 
when they are ill. That is their idea of a good landlord.” 

“I don’t care about gratitude,” replied Constance ; “but I adore 
pretty cottages, and bright hearths, and well-fed, comfortably clad 
children ; and I must have them about me whatever they cost. I 


348 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


can go without ostrich-feather bordering for my gowns, and I can 
buy a gown or two less in the course of the year.” 

They talked together for a few minutes in the old panelled hall, 
those two happy lovers : and then Ishmael went into the drawing- 
room with his fiancee to be presented to Lord Kilrush, an aristo- 
cratic old gentleman, with a Eoman nose that had been slightly 
damaged in the days of his youth, a small waist, an elegant swag- 
ger, and a set of antique seals hanging from an antique chain, which 
he played with almost i>erpetually with delicate, nervous fingers. 

He received Ishmael graciously, and made himself very agreeable 
all dinner-time, but evidently had not a thought in common with 
his future son-in-law. His conversation was chiefly made up of in- 
quiries about some of the worst people in Parisian society, and the 
raking up of old scandals which seemed to have sunk deep into his 
mind, and old bon-mots on the verge of impropriety. 

After dinner he went to sleep in a luxurious armchair, close by 
the wide, old-fashioned fireplace, and Ishmael and Constance had 
the rest of the evening to themselves. They were married next 
morning in the pretty little chapel, and this time there was no tragic 
interruption of their wedding. The old priest snuffled a pious ex- 
hortation to the newly wedded, the mstic choir sung a hymeneal 
hymn, and Lord Kilrush’s carriage bore Ishmael and his wife on 
the first stage of their journey to Killarney, where they were to 
begin their honeymoon, under the soft gray skies, beside the calm 
blue lake, amidst groves of arbutus, bright ’with autumn's scarlet 
berries, beneath the shadow of the Purple Mountain. 

In December they went back to Paris, Ishmael full of work, his 
wife full of pride and interest in that work of his : proudest of all 
when she saw the children’s home beyond Marly, and heard that 
chorus of multitudinous voices sending up their glad peal of wel- 
come, ‘ ‘ Monsieur Chose ! Monsieur Chose ! ” while the happy faces 
all wore one broad smile of childish love. In all things she was 
his helpmeet. In great achievements, in acts of benevolence ; 
sharer of all his hopes, and all his dreams ; noble inspirer of noble 
ideas. 

And now for his wife’s sake — the pride of birth being an instinct 
among well-born women — he who had been known so long through- 
out the length and breadth of the land as Ishmael, allowed himself 
to be known in Parisian society as Sebastian de Caradec, of Pen- 
Hoel ; and now the old chateau above the winding Couesnon was 
beautified, restored, and expanded into one of the most perfect 
country-houses in France ; and wider lands were added to the 
shrunken estate of the Caradecs. Ishmael, the despised and outcast, 
had redeemed the fortunes of his race, and won renown for the 
name of his forefathers. 

“ Peace hath her victories as well as war.” 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


349 


CHAPTER XLII. 

“in the IVnDST OF BABYLON HE SHALL DIE.” 

"With the closing of 1867 the shadows darkened over the political 
horizon, and the imperial star which had once ruled in so fair a 
heaven now rode in a sky that was charged with storm-clouds. Out- 
wardly this city of palaces, boulevards, and cafCs, wus as brilliant 
as ever ; but there was a worm at the root of the tree ; trouble and 
confusion were in the minds of men ; the nation found no place for 
the sole of her foot, betw^een an empire which was no longer im- 
perial in its policy, and a constitution -which was not created. Even 
the little bourgeoisie, the narrow-minded gentry of the factory and 
the shop, wdio only Avanted to sell their goods and fill their purses, 
even these were gloomy, looking upon this International Fair that 
was just over as the fat kine which would be found by and by to 
have eaten up all the lean kine, forestalling public expenditure, and 
leaving a series of dull seasons to follow, in a dispiriting future of 
impoverishment and decay. 

That tragic memoiy of Queretaro weighed heavily on many a 
heart, while the Mexican loan had emjDtied many a widow’s purse 
and pinched many an orphan. Nearer at hand there were rumors 
of a conspiracy, fulminating cotton manufactured in cellars, a secret 
society called the Commune Revolutionnaire des Ouvriers de Paris. 
The Red Viper, warmed in the bosom of the empire, was turning 
its sting upon its protector. 

In a letter written at this time by one of the emperor’s most faith- 
ful adherents, the note of the warning, the cry of peril, w’as for the 
first time boldly sounded in the imi:)erial ear. “ The empire ci-um- 
bles on every side. Your enemies, under the pretext of founding a 
parliamentary regime, have sworn your ruin ; your ministers truckle 
to your adversaries ; they abandon at a stroke the policy of the last 
fourteen years ; your house is in flames.” 

So wrote Persigny to his master ; but the warning fell on a dull 
and reluctant ear. That imperial master’s health was failing, his 
mind w^as troubled by the inroads of an insidious disease. He who, 
in the bright morning of life, in the maturity of manhood,, bold to 
audacity, with equal faith in himself and in destiny, had trusted in 
the star of his house — now looked to that star to save him from 
perils with which his genius had no longer power to cope. He who 
once crossed the stream at the head of his legions, reckless how 
fierce might be the battle on the further shore, now folded himself 
in his imperial mantle, in the sublime isolation of a neutral policy, 
and told his people that the temple of w^ar was closed. Yes ; the 
temple of victorious war was closed for ever for Napoleon the Third 
and his subjects — a temple draped in sackcloth. Victory had de- 
parted from France. The reign of the Eagles was over. 

It -was in the early spring of 1868, when the buds were unfolding 
upon the emperor’s tree — that chestnut in the imperial gardens 


350 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


which w’as supposed to bloom just a little while before all other 
trees — it was iu the bright balmy beginning of a fine April, that an 
event occurred which made a twenty-four hours’ wonder for the idle, 
talkative great world of Paris, and distracted so'ciety for that brief 
space from the rumors of war, the discussion of the emperor’s pro- 
posed journey to Borne, Monseignor Duj^anloup’s manifesto on the 
subject of female education, and the exciting anticipation of a cer- 
tain political journal of an ultra-revolutionary color, to be issued 
presently by Henri de Bochefort, late contributor to the Figaro. 

In these days there still existed in the vicinity of a chatelet an 
old, old street — marked for destruction, but not yet destroyed— a 
street historical with sinister histories ; picturesque from the stand- 
point of painter or poet ; hideous, revolting, as a place in which to 
live ; perilous as a place through which to pass. The x)olice of 
Paris, excellent, brave to recklessness, but much too few for the 
work they have to do, avoided this Bue de la Yielle Lanterne, unless 
summoned thither by some special cause. It 'was an abode of crime, 
given over to criminals. The pantre — or layman — who penetrated 
the mystery of the place went thither at his j^eril. 

This hideous alley ended in a kind of staircase, leading to a street 
on a lower level. On one of those balmy April mornings, when the 
breeze blowing from the river seemed charged wuth the perfume of 
distant orchards and flower-gardens, or at least with the breath of 
the flower-market yonder — a man was found hanging from the mas- 
sive old iron bar of a window in the house looking upon this stair- 
case — dead. 

He was not an inhabitant of the street, nor was he known to any 
of its occupants, who came out of their doors, and hung out of their 
windows, in a matinal disarray, to stare and w’onder at this strange 
guest who had come among them in the darkness of the night, and 
had taken up his abode there so quietly, none hearing the groan or 
the sigh with which his spirit fled from its gaunt and wasted tene- 
ment. He looked like a gentleman, though his garments were in 
the last stage of shabbiness, just as his poor frame was in the last 
stage of attenuation. 

The police were summoned, took their cool suiwey of the details 
of the case : a new rope bought on purpose for this final act, and tied 
securely to the stout iron window-bar ; a loose block of stone by 
which the suicide had clambered to the window, tied his rope, made 
his noose, slipped it over his head, and then kicked away the stone. 
It was all as simple as bonjour. This repulsive spot had doubtless 
been chosen as a liaven w'here a man might kill himself in peace, 
secure from sympathy, rescue, officious interruption. In Paris, where 
suicide is a fine art, this new development astonished nobody. 

There were no papers in the dead man’s pockets. The police had 
only to carry the corpse to the Morgue yonder, and leave it there for 
recognition. Some one w^ould be sure to recognize. The hour of 
recognition came quickly. A medical student from the Boul. Mich, 
strolled into the Morgue to look about him, by way of education ; 
saw the haggard face lying there, with a strange, wan smile, half 
debonnaire, half cynical, and recognized an old acquaintance of the 


I8HMAELITE. 


351 


Ecossaises and the Pantagruel ; a man who was the most brilliant 
talker in the circle of rates at the latter resort — a man who of late 
years had called himself Jean Nimporte, but who was well known 
to all literary Paris as Hector de Valnois, author of “ Mes Nnits 
Blanches ; ” once one of the finest critics, and one of the most 
promising poets in France ; a man who might have been a power in 
the land. Alas ! Hades is peopled with the pale, j)inched shades of 
the men who might have been great ! 

The student’s eyes clouded as he stood looking down at the 
l^atrician face, the delicate chiselling of the features, accentuated 
by the rigidity of death. 

“Poor devil! Was not the absinthe poison killing him fast 
enough, that he must needs take a short cut to his coffin?” he 
muttered. “ Well, I will send round the hat to-night at the Panta- 
gruel, and we will bury him decently, with Balzac and the rest. 
Eoumestan, the eloquent young Marseillais advocate, who is going 
to be one of the greatest men in France, shall make a speech above 
his grave.” 

Within a week of the closing of that grave in the cemetery of P^re 
Lachaise, the Vicomte de Pontchartrain’s second volume of j^oems, 
“ Charniers et Sepulcres,” was given to the Parisian world ; a dainty 
little volume, attenuated as the vicomte himself, printed on satin 
paper, bordered with carmine, enriched with symbolical initials and 
floral tail-pieces. 

The verses were received with enthusiasm by that little knot of 
advanced thinkers who welcome the wild, the extravagant, the 
audacious, the obscure in art and literature ; and in the Paris of 
those days advanced thought was considered a distinction, not that 
in 1867 we had quite reached that outspoken Gospel of Atheism 
which is the latest vogue by way of poetry. The verses were the 
last development of the spasmodic school — du Baudelaire pousse au 
vif, said one of the critics ; bitter as absinthe ; despairing ; the 
death-throes of a life’s agony ; and despite many flaws, the book 
attracted the town, and was talked of everywhere. 

The little vicomte w'as enchanted with his success. His book was 
talked about wherever he went. He was called upon to explain and 
elucidate ceriain passages : his meaning here, the subtle, underlying 
intention there, this or that profound thought ; not always an easy 
task for a poet of the obscure school. But Pontchartrain came 
through it splendidly ; philosophized and declaimed to circles of 
listening women, breathless as they hung upon his eloquence. In 
a word, he w^as the fashionable success of the season, the sought-for 
in every salon. 

It was during a soiree at the Tuileries, when the poet had been 
complimented by the emperor himself, and had retired from that 
august presence flushed with visions of the Legion of Honor and the 
Academy, that Mine, de Keratry, exquisitely dressed in a gown by 
Spricht,"laughiug, joyous, triumphant in her new role of jeune mariee, 
took him into the embrasure of a window, and asked him to sit by 
her side for a few minutes, as she had something — a little secret, a 
laughable anecdote — to tell him. 


352 


AN ISHMAELITE. 


And then, beaming at him with radiant smiles, she told him of 
her visit to the teinturier’s den, and how she and Keratry had been 
hidden in the loft, and had heard him bargaining for the verses 
which had made him famous. 

‘ ‘ Do not you feel, now that your book is creating a furore, that 
you might have given that j^oor creature a little more money for his 
work ? ” she said, reproachfully. “ And I heard the other day that 
he hanged himself in an old street in Paris, in an interval of insanity 
brought about by drink ; much more, perhaps, by poverty and the / 
wretched life he led. There was an account of his funeral in one of 
the pa23ers ; a grand speech made by a young advocate called Koum- 
estan, whom peoj^le talk of as the successor to Berryer and Arago.” 

“ The verses you talk of were mere experiments — imjDossible at- 
temjjts which I collected as a curious study in the decadence of a 
once brilliant mind,” said the vicomte, trying to make the best of a 
des2)erate situation. “ You cannot for a moment supj^ose that I ? ” 

“That you jDalmed off another man’s work as your own? Of 
course not, vicomte ; especially after your indignation one day at 
Lady Constance Danetree’s, w'hen I mentioned the teinturier : ‘ Cela 
ne se pent pas ! ’ you cried, in a tumult of fine feeling ; ‘ cela ne se 
j^eut i)as ! ’ If I were to tell people that stoiy ! ” 

She burst out laughing, hiding herself behind her fan, in a con- 
vulsion of mirth. 

“ I dare say you have told every creature of your acquaintance,” 
exclaimed Pontchartrain, furiously. 

“Not a mortal. But I confess, that if it had not been for the 
sake of Hortense, who is silly enough to believe in you and to ad- 
mire you, I should have told all Paris. The story is too good to be 
locked up in my memory.” 

“Perhaps, for your sister’s sake, you will continue to keej) your 
counsel about a matter which you entirely misunderstand,” said the 
vicomte, with dignity ; and then he rose and stalked away, leaving 
Mme. de Keratry still laughing behind her fan. 

He proposed to Hortense next morning, and is hapj^y in the wor- 
ship of a wife who still believes in him, long after the world at large 
has found out that he is a sham. 


<10 5 




THE END. 












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